Look at the south lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum, where four giant badminton shuttlecocks — each nearly 18 feet tall and weighing 5,500 pounds — appear to have landed after an invisible game played by giants. Installed in 1994 by artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, the shuttlecocks have become one of the most photographed works of public art in Kansas City and a beloved landmark that locals either loved immediately or grew to love over time. The piece is quintessential Pop Art in the Oldenburg tradition: taking an ordinary, humble object and blowing it up to a scale that defamiliarizes it completely.
A shuttlecock you bat around the backyard becomes, at 18 feet, something almost architectural — an object that changes the way you perceive the immaculate neoclassical building behind it. The contrast is entirely intentional. The stately limestone museum, the manicured lawn, and then these four absurd, magnificent objects scattered across the grass as if gravity itself decided to have a sense of humor.
Kansas City could have declined to purchase them. Instead it bought four. That tells you something about this city.