Giant Three-Way Plug (Cube Tap)

Claes Oldenburg's first commissioned permanent outdoor sculpture, Giant Three-Way Plug, comprises a 3.5-ton Cor-Ten steel body with polished bronze prongs. Fabricated in an edition of three at the Lippincott factory in North Haven, Connecticut, the subject was chosen from several different models (including a soft monumental ice pack) the artist presented after a series of visits to Oberlin. The sculpture was commissioned by the AMAM in January 1969, installed on August 10, 1970, and dedicated on September 14 of that year. The two other editioned examples were executed later and are in the collections of the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In January 1963, Oldenburg participated -along with Joan Mitchell and Robert Rauschenberg-in the Three Young Americans exhibition at the museum. Ellen Johnson remarked in the 1963 AMAM Bulletin that Oldenburg's current work was more sculpture than painting, with a new interest in composing volumes. This exhibition and Oberlin's ongoing friendship with Oldenburg forged the way for the museum to work with the artist again in the late 1960s to commission a monumental sculpture. Plug developed from a concept that Oldenburg had already produced in different versions, notably hard and soft plugs suspended from above, with prongs pointing down. Much larger in scale, placed directly on the ground, and partly buried, Oberlin's Plug continues to engage powerfully the environment that surrounds it. Johnson described Oberlin as a place where people are intrigued and engaged with the sculpture and "where everyone accepts that it is a serious work of art, which began when a major sculptor looked at a little twenty-five cent plug that the rest of us take for granted."

Among the multiple readings of the sculpture is the artist's suggestion that it could serve as a monument to Thomas Edison, who was born near Oberlin in Milan, Ohio. Oldenburg also remarked that if Plug were installed with the prongs embedded in the ground, the idea of contact, or plugging in, would have been lost.

In 1970, during a visit to finalize the site, Oldenburg said, "there are plugs lying around in drawers all over the world; they are nothing until contact is made." For the 1970 installation, the bronze prongs pointed west toward Tappan Square, the large, treelined park directly across from the museum, effectively connecting the visual arts with the rest of the campus and the town of Oberlin.

The artist's wit and whimsy came alive again for Oberlin when the Venturi, Rauch, and Scott Brown addition to the AMAM and Art Building was completed in 1977. The addition was in its early planning stages when Oldenburg's Plug was first sited, and he knew the sculpture would eventually be relocated. Oldenburg chose a new site in 1976, locating the Plug on a downward slope on the museum's southwest lawn, with the bronze prongs oriented toward the new art building. Oldenburg also responded to the new building in visual form with Alternate Proposal (AMAM 1979.29) , a design for the museum addition in the shape of mammoth three-way plugs linked together to form connected pods.

Today, thanks to Ellen Johnson's 1998 bequest and gifts from many generous donors, there are thirty-eight sculptures, drawings, and prints by Oldenburg in the museum's collection. An outstanding recent gift, Giant Saw-Soft Version (Saw Flag), from 1966, was presented to the museum in 2003 by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in honor of Ellen Johnson.