Alternate Proposal for an Addition to the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio

Claes Oldenburg’s Giant Three-Way Plug (1970) was the artist’s first commission for a permanent public sculpture. The plug made repeat appearances in Oldenburg’s work, whether as an image rendered in soft watercolors on paper, or as a sculptural object, created at different scales and out of a wide variety of materials, including vinyl, denim, wood, and metal. An electrical plug might at first glance seem less fanciful than the ice cream cones and slices of pie for which Oldenburg is best known, but funneled through his particular vision of the world, in which everyday objects are made strange, wonderful, and sometimes menacing, even an electrical accessory can be playful while also telegraphing energy, power, and danger, as when Oldenburg has depicted the plug floating in bodies of water. In this print, made almost a decade after Oldenburg installed his giant plug at Oberlin, he reimagines it, expanded in scale, multiplied, and literally “plugged” into Cass Gilbert’s 1917 building. In 1977, postmodern architect Robert Venturi had completed an actual extension of the museum consisting of a new gallery for modern and con-temporary art along with an art library and studios, making this “alternate proposal” pure fantasy.