If it hadn’t been the very reason I was visiting Lynn Boland’s office Thursday morning, I would have been surprised to see the giant can opener sitting on a nearby desk.
Made of some sort of thick cardboard or foam and covered in aluminum foil, the contraption was just over seven feet long, around three feet wide and “solid,” yet “surprisingly lightweight,” Boland said, wrestling the opener so I could see it at its full height.
In fact, if Boland — the director and chief curator at Colorado State University’s Gregory Allicar Museum of Art — had seen the piece on its own, “I would have been impressed.”
The can opener, however, had been found earlier this month atop CSU’s Campbell’s soup can, a towering replica made for Andy Warhol’s 1981 visit to the school and later put on public display outside of the University Center for the Arts.
While its creator appears to be well intentioned — Boland surmised the mysterious vandal placed the opener on the can as a nod to Warhol’s August 6 birthday — the move marked the latest in a string of vandalism incidents that have damaged the beloved can.