CowParades Around the World

People lined up to take photos with the statue. It stood tall, decorated with a red Sergeant Pepper coat and yellow pants, and a dark mustache. It was the Superlambanana in front of the official Beatles Museum in Liverpool, England. For ten weeks over the summer of 2008, Liverpool celebrated the Go Superlambananas festival, where 120 Superlambanana statues-part lamb, part banana-were sprinkled across the city, each one decorated by a different artist. At the end of the festival, all the Superlambananas were auctioned off for charity.

Go Superlambananas, while an unusual festival, is not the only one of its kind. The original idea to have multiple statues painted by different artists displayed all over a city was known as CowParade. CowParade started in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1998. Local artists decorated numerous fiberglass sculptures of cows, which were then exhibited in public areas of the city, such as parks and train stations. After several months of being on display, the cows are auctioned off and the money goes to charity. Pascal Knapp, a Swiss sculptor, created the three main cow shaped statues, which are commonly used in all CowParades.

Although the first CowParade was actually called "Land in Sicht", which means "countryside in view," it turned into an international concept when Peter Hanig and Lois Weisberg organized a similar event in 1999 in Chicago. Since then, there have been many similar statue-decorating projects in cities around the world.

One famous project was the Peanuts on Parade in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was a tribute to the Peanuts in 2000, and 101 Snoopy statues were placed around St. Paul. At the end of the summer, the statues were auctioned off. For the next three years, St. Paul continued its statue event with "Charlie Brown Around Town" in 2001, "Looking for Lucy" in 2002, and "Linus Blankets Saint Paul" in 2003.

Another famous statue project was "Celebrate Mickey: 75 InspEARations" in 2004. Mickey celebrated his 75^th birthday with 75 different statues decorated in his honor. Some of the statues included a Lobsta Mickey (Mickey painted a lobster red with claws instead of hands), FrontEAR tales Mickey (Mickey wearing Davy Crokett's coonskin cap), and Crazy Style Mickey (Mickey covered in graffiti art), among others. The statues went on tour and were displayed all over the world, starting with Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, then moving to Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Houston, Dallas, Portland, Disneyland, Washington D.C. and finally, New York City. In 2005, all the Mickey statues were auctioned off at Sotheby's Auction House, and each artist chose which charity to donate the proceeds from the auction.

Examples of other CowParade copycats include "Camel Caravan" in Dubai in 2003, "Shoe Art" in Istanbul (featuring 500 shoes) in 2008, "Guitar Town" in Austin, Texas in 2007, "GECKOFest in Bradenton, Florida in 2006, and "Orcas in the City" in Vancouver in 2003. For a complete list of statue parades worldwide, click here.

References:

http://www.liverpool.com/events-features/bye-bye-lambananas.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CowParade

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanuts

http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=112267

http://www.dcpages.com/gallery/Mickey-Mouse-75th-Anniversary/