I ran across the moose first. Dozens of them. In unlikely colors and designs and places like the moose on a diving board.
They filled downtown Toronto and I thought they were the most original things I’d ever seen. I shot miles of film and thought, “How delightfully Canadian…” (Photo from the "Moose in the City" website)
Of course, I learned not soon after that the 326 Moose in the City were part of a cultural/fundraising phenomenon. Placing identical animals around town and having various local artists decorate them to be auctioned off had begun with the Zurich, Switzerland cows in 1998 and moved to Chicago the following year. The animals celebrate the cities and the artists of a place uniquely. It’s been simply astonishing to find how different a cow, or a horse, or a moose can look when a good visual/conceptual artist gets hold of it! So I decided to find out more about where and what’s been used to do the animal parade around the country.
There were, of course, Chicago’s and New York’s and Waco, TX’s cows. Cincinnati chose pigs and Belfast ME chose bears. Toronto, of course had its moose and Lexington, KY and Tucson chose horses. It was pretty predictable that Buffalo NY would choose buffalo and Boston had was most original with its Cavalcade of Cod that filled the downtown streets with colorful fish in 2002. Baltimore had its “Fish out of water” and Washington, DC, of course, used donkeys and elephants for their parade. Newport, RI, in a rare break from tradition, used sailboats. Stunning.
This summer, Washington will reprise its success and have “Pandamania” in which painted pandas will appear all over the streets. Something to watch for!
6:51:24 PM 
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