Charging Bull: The Guerrilla Art Installation That Claimed Wall Street

The Stock Exchange had the sculpture hauled away to an impound lot within hours. However, massive public outcry and media attention led Parks & Recreation to arrange a temporary home for the sculpture just two blocks south at Bowling Green plaza, where it has remained on temporary permit ever since.

Arturo Di Modica was born on January 26, 1941, in Vittoria, a small town in southeastern Sicily known for citrus groves rather than sculpture. In 1960 he left for Florence to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1973 he crossed the Atlantic with ambitions scaled to Manhattan itself. He opened his first American studio on Grand Street in SoHo, and in 1978 began converting a second space on Crosby Street — the workshop where the bull would eventually take shape. By the mid-1980s he had wealthy patrons and a Ferrari. Long before the bull, Di Modica had a habit of planting unauthorized work around the city. In 1977, after a gallery exhibition underwhelmed him, he trucked eight marble sculptures to Rockefeller Center and set them up without permission. On Valentine's Day 1985, he dropped a massive bronze horse, titled Il Cavallo, on the plaza at Lincoln Center, calling it a gift to New Yorkers in love. Both stunts earned him headlines — and fines. The October 1987 crash gave him a subject worthy of the risk. For two years he cast the bull in sections: an 11-foot-tall, 16-foot-long animal too large to forge whole, welded together and finished by hand in his Crosby Street studio. Estimates of what he spent range from $325,000 to $360,000, all of it his own money. When the city impounded the sculpture, he paid the $500 fine without blinking.

On the eve of International Women's Day, March 7, 2017, the bull acquired a companion it never asked for. Financial firm State Street Global Advisors, working with ad agency McCann, installed a bronze statue of a small girl — hands on hips, chin up — directly in the bull's path. The sculptor was Kristen Visbal; a plaque at the girl's feet read, "Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference." The piece was meant to last a week. Instead, it went viral, and the city extended its stay through 2018. Di Modica was furious. He argued that Fearless Girl recast his sculpture as a villain and violated his copyright, turning a symbol of American resilience into a prop for a corporate marketing campaign. In April 2018, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a resolution: Fearless Girl would get a permanent home in front of the New York Stock Exchange. She was relocated on December 10, 2018. On the cobblestones at Bowling Green, the city installed a small bronze plaque with a pair of footprints, noting that the girl had stood there and was "on the move to the New York Stock Exchange." Di Modica kept up his opposition to the bull being moved alongside her, and the bull stayed put.

Stand behind the bull and you'll find the most crowded spot at Bowling Green. Thousands of visitors each day queue for the rear view, and many reach up to rub the sculpture's testicles — a ritual said to bring luck, prosperity, and a profitable trading day. The snout and horns get the same treatment. Decades of palms and fingertips have polished those areas to a bright, burnished gold that stands out sharply against the darker patina of the rest of the bronze. The bronze has taken damage too. Paint was dumped on it in 2008 and again in 2017, and in September 2019 a man attacked the statue with a banjo, damaging one of its horns before being arrested. Di Modica never saw the end of the statue's adventures: he died of cancer on February 19, 2021, at his home in Vittoria, aged 80. The town declared his funeral an official day of mourning. In June 2023, New York Mayor Eric Adams accepted a plaque from Italian officials formally certifying that Charging Bull was Di Modica's creation — his gift to the city of New York. The bull has also traveled. Di Modica installed a younger, stronger version on the Bund in Shanghai in 2010, and another stands outside the Euronext exchange in Amsterdam. But the original remains at Bowling Green, still technically on a temporary permit after more than three decades.

Hero photo: Bruno Sanchez-Andrade Nuño, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Gallery photos: Tdorante10 (CC BY-SA 4.0), Based5290 (CC BY-SA 3.0), vagueonthehow (CC BY 2.0), Epicgenius (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons.