Illinois Landscape #5 was commissioned by the Governor’s State University Foundation with assistance from the National Endowment for the Arts. It made its debut on the GSU Campus in 1976 in the groundbreaking exhibition The Sculptor, the Campus, and the Prairie, which brought work by seven sculptors to the campus.

Until Tatlin’s Sentinel, Illinois Landscape #5 was Henry’s largest piece, measuring 134 feet in length, it is a sprawling horizontal built of two foot square tube elements. Through the careful arrangement of simple forms and with great attention to visual weight the structure which seems to dance effortlessly across the landscape. The sculpture is also an interactive work, so large the viewer can enter it and move easily between its monumental components – experiencing the work from both the inside and out.