Category: Art Pranks

This post was submitted by ArtofthePrank.com reader Mary Johnson:

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Big humor engages high culture on a grand scale in the art of sculpture pranking. A very big horse makes for very big poop and very big poop calls for a very big scoop. There is such a scoop, called Paletta Grande, at internationally renowned Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Paletta Grande is currently in use by artist Nina Akamu’s, The American Horse, created in homage to Leonardo da Vinci’s original commission by the Duke of Milan, which, at twenty-four feet high, is the second largest equestrian statue in the world.

Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park presents the never-before-exhibited Paletta Grande (“Big Scoop”, “Large Shovel”) by Francesco Nicola Sansovino, the largest public scoop exhibit in Grand Rapids history. Continue reading “PALETTA GRANDE – sculpture prank”

The Washington Post did an interesting experiment recently that was somewhat of a prank. They had Joshua Bell, one of the world’s greatest violinists play in the DC Metro, posing as a normal street musician. The resulting article is incredibly long, but the idea is really fun. Written by Gene Weingarten, Emily Shroder, Rachel Manteuffel, John W. Poole and Magazine Editor Tom Shroder contributed to this report. -CT

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Pearls Before Breakfast

Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let’s find out.
By Gene Weingarten
Washington Post Staff Writer
April 8, 2007

He emerged from the Metro at the L’Enfant Plaza Station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L’Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he’s really bad? What if he’s really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you? What’s the moral mathematics of the moment? …

Read the whole article here