The Portals video art installation goes live in Love Park on Tuesday

This great, big world will soon become much smaller and more friendly, and you’ll need to go no further than LOVE Park to join the experience.

At 10 a.m. Tuesday, the Portals sculpture recently installed in Philadelphia’s iconic park will go live, linking the City of Brotherly Love via real time video with cities in three European countries — Dublin, Ireland, Vilnius in Lithuania, and Lublin, Poland.

“We hope a Portal will find a permanent home in the birthplace of America,” said Benediktas Gylys, the Lithuanian artist who created the Portals project several years ago.

Gylys said he considers it “an honor” to have his sculpture in Philadelphia, “just meters away from where the American Declaration of Independence was signed almost 250 years ago. I hope that the local community will accept the Portal sculpture as part of the city.”

Once it gets turned on, the connection between Philadelphia and each of the other three cities will change, rotating approximately every three minutes, “inviting everyone to meet and share humanity with people from different countries and cultures — people whom we might otherwise never meet in our lifetimes here on planet Earth,” the creator said.

Since the first Portals were installed connecting Vilnius and Lublin in 2021, the project’s directors estimate hundreds of millions of people have taken part in the experience. Portals were added, connecting Dublin and New York City. The Portal that had been in New York City until early last month has now been rehomed to Philly.

Social media and passersby certainly have been buzzing since the large, orb-like structure appeared recently. That includes buzz about The Crack. There is a crack in the lower, center part of the Portal’s large screen.

In answer to the question every Philly person wanted to know: No, we didn’t do it.

Apparently, the crack happened in transit from New York to here, according to a Portals spokesman.

Grover Washington III, a contractor with Portals.org in charge of the installation said the Portal will work fine as is, but a new piece of glass is on order and will be installed within a week.

“It’s perfectly operational with the glass like that,” Washington said.

Of course, he’s talking to the people who have loved the Liberty Bell — crack and all — for hundreds of years. Folks in LOVE Park on Monday seemed excited the Portal was here.

“It’s so cool! So cool!” said Norma Jones, 60, a Philadelphia city worker who stopped by the park to check on the installation’s progress. “I think it’s great. It’s needed. With Philadelphia as a tourist city, this will be a great attraction.”

For the Sharp family of Buffalo, the Portal was just another unexpected pleasure on their trip to Philadelphia to celebrate daughter Marissa’s tenth birthday. They did Reading Terminal Market, the Rocky Steps. Eastern State Penitentiary, ate cheesesteaks. That evening they were going to Monday Night Raw, and Marissa was hoping to meet her hero, pro wrestler Seth Rollins.

Her dad, Jeremy Sharp, 46, thought the idea of the Portal was a beautiful thing.

“It’s a great idea,” he said. “Familiarity brings a sense of connection, right? We tend to fear things we don’t understand. So anything that gives people a greater understanding of others and other cultures, that’s always good, as long as we show the best side of ourselves, right?”

Truth be told, some folks were hoping Philly would behave itself. The portal between New York and Dublin was temporarily paused after some people engaged in some lewd behavior.

“I heard someone like flashed it, and they cut off the feed,” said Erin May, 19, of Malvern, who was in LOVE Park on Monday with some fellow University of Notre Dame students.

Her friend Grace Slear, 19, of Maryland said she didn’t see any nasty behavior when she was studying abroad in Dublin and checked in at the Portal. On the contrary.

“If you think about it logically, it’s so much worse than FaceTime for actually connecting,” she said, since there is no audio. “But it’s so cool having this structure in the middle of the city and getting to see each other through this public lens. That makes it so much more distinct and unique — looking through the Portal at your friend versus looking on your phone or something.”

In time, even more people will be able to connect.

Gylys said yet another Portal is in the works in the state of Piaui, Brazil and another is planned for somewhere in Asia.

“It’s a long and difficult process, but I feel grateful and blessed to dedicate my life to building this bridge to a united planet,” he said. “For us, it’s not only about building Portals. It’s about spreading the message of positivity, unity and light.”