It made sense, for example, to make the gallery's labels bilingual because one-fourth of Fitchburg’s population is Latino and many residents speak Spanish at home. And we need to do everything we can do to help the community in any way it makes sense for a museum to do that.” Fitchburg Art Museum director Nick Capasso. “But one of the great strengths of this city is its art museum. "Fitchburg is a Gateway City - the euphemism for old, dying mill towns - and it’s got a lot of problems,” Capasso told me on a recent visit.
Over the last three years Capasso has been working with leadership, curators and educators to devise ways they can make a difference in a city that’s struggling. "We are here to serve people."Ī new exhibition reveals how he and his museum team are using contemporary art, industry and plastic pink flamingos to connect with the community.
"Many art museums are very busy serving art - and we look at it a little differently," director Nick Capasso explained. The Fitchburg Art Museum (FAM) in central Massachusetts is on a mission to redefine its role. (Andrea Shea/WBUR) This article is more than 6 years old. ISBN 978-0-7643-0963-2.Fitchburg's Don Featherstone created the original plastic pink flamingo back in 1957. The Original Pink Flamingos: Splendor on the Grass. Featherstone, Don Herzing, Tom (1999).Published NovemReflects on the shutdown of the original plastic-flamingo factory and the flamingo's impact on popular culture. Describes the change in design and calls for boycott. "Join the Plastic Pink Flamingo Boycott!". "Garden gnome politics: the age-old battle over landscape expression". 'We also incorporated the Official Bird of Madison, the Pink Plastic Flamingo, which was also a popular name submission by the fans,' Wilt said. "City designates plastic pink flamingo as official city bird". From the Associated Press, on the purchase and re-production of Don Featherstone's original plastic-flamingo design. ^ "Retro pink flamingos to hatch in New York".^ Alice Shirrell Kaswell, AIR staff ().^ "Is the pink flamingo an endangered species?"."Backstory: Extinction of an American icon?".
#PLASTIC FLAMINGO MOVIE#
The movie Pink Flamingos is named after them and helped them become an icon of trash and kitsch. In the media and fiction, plastic flamingos are often used as a symbol of kitsch, bad taste and cheapness. Some homeowners associations forbid the installation of plastic flamingos and similar lawn ornaments, and will fine offending owners, based on the theory that such decorations lower the neighborhood's real estate values.
The city's soccer club, Forward Madison FC, uses the plastic flamingo on its logo. In 2009, the city of Madison, Wisconsin Common Council designated the plastic flamingo as the city's official bird. In 2010, Cado Manufacturing purchased the copyrights and the entire Union Products product line, including the pink flamingo, from HMC. HMC sub-contracted production of the flamingos to Cado Manufacturing, Inc., a blow-molder located in Leominster, Massachusetts who specialized in this type of production. HMC International LLC, a subsidiary of Faster-Form Corporation, purchased the copyright and plastic molds of Featherstone's original plastic flamingos in 2007. Union Products, of Leominster, Massachusetts, stopped production of pink flamingos on November 1, 2006. In December 2001, the Annals of Improbable Research (bestowers of the Ig Nobel prize) teamed up with the Museum of Bad Art to protest this omission in the form of a boycott. Sometime after Featherstone's retirement in 2000, Union Products began producing birds without the signature. These official flamingos were sold in pairs, with one standing upright and the other with its head low to the ground, "feeding". Genuine pink flamingos made by Union Products from 1987 (the 30th anniversary of the plastic flamingo) until 2001 can be identified by the signature of Don Featherstone located on the rear underside. Many imitation products have found their way onto front lawns and store shelves since then. After the release of John Waters's 1972 movie Pink Flamingos, plastic flamingos came to be the stereotypical example of lawn kitsch.
It has even spawned a lawn greeting industry where flocks of pink flamingos are installed on a victim's lawn in the dark of night. The first pink flamingo's name was Diego, and has become an icon of pop culture that won him the Ig Nobel Prize for Art in 1996. The pink lawn flamingo was designed in 1957 by Don Featherstone.
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