The husband and wife team of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen were commissioned in 1992 to design a sculpture for The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. They responded to the formality of the Museum’s 1933 neoclassical building and the green expanse of its lawn by imagining the Museum as a badminton net and the lawn as a playing field. The pair designed four birdies or shuttlecocks that were placed as though they had just landed on opposite sides of the net. Each shuttlecock weighs 5,500 pounds, stands nearly 18 feet tall and has a diameter of some 16 feet.

Photo by Bob Osias