The Peabody Essex Museum (which is located in Salem, rather than either Peabody or Essex) is really fun and quite hands-on for an art museum. So I thought it might be a good place to insert a faux art object, since they seem less uptight than some other local museums. Additionally, since they are showing an origami exhibit with several pieces made by artists associated with MIT, it seemed an appropriate venue for displaying a version of MIT's largest piece of art reproduced in paper.

The obvious difficulty in bringing art into such a museum is that they do not allow any bags or even outerwear in which you might hide objects. However, they do allow sketch pads, so I was able to smuggle in the flat components. I brought a small amount of tape in my pocket. Entering the museum, I proceeded to an area set up to allow visitors to try folding origami and quickly assembled my not-origami. (I've gotten obsessed with this form after doing the scale model task.)

Then I went into the origami exhibit where some art-in-a-cabinet provided a nice place to leave my object. The room was pretty busy, but everyone seemed to busy looking at art to pay much attention to me. Unlike some of the other galleries, I didn't see any uniformed museum staff in the room. After fifteen minutes, the object was still there. I wanted to see how long it would remain, but got distracted sketching. When I returned after another hour, the object had been removed.

The tag said:
Big Sail (La Grande Voile)
MIT campus, Cambridge MA
At the foot of the Green Building
33 ton
40 feet high

Little Sail
MIT campus, Cambridge MA
Lobby of the Media Lab
Intermediate model
8 feet high

Alexander Calder (1898-1976), whose illustrious career spanned much of the 20th century, is the most acclaimed and influential sculptor of our time. Born in a family of celebrated, though more classically trained artists, Calder utilized his innovative genius to profoundly change the course of modern art. He began by developing a new method of sculpting: by bending and twisting wire, he essentially "drew" three-dimensional figures in space. He is renowned for the invention of the mobile, whose suspended, abstract elements move and balance in changing harmony. Calder also devoted himself to making outdoor sculpture on a grand scale from bolted sheet steel. Today, these stately titans grace public plazas in cities throughout the world.
Copyright 2007 Calder Foundation

Scale Model
This scale model of the Big (and Little) Sail is not origami because it was constructed by cutting out shapes and taping them together. It is brought to you by the players of SF Zero, www.sf0.org.