When you’re talking giant sculpture - as we so often do - there’s nothing that the commissioners of these outsized sculptural signs like more than matching the content to local interests. That’s where New Zealand’s giant carrots, trouts and bottles of fizz come from. So if you’re in Vegas and you’re thinking big in a casino, what do you go for? A super-sized shoe, of course. And that’s exactly what The Cosmopolitan opted for. Via artist Roark Gourley.
The problem was that drunk (and sober) guests spent quite a lot of time clambering into the shoe to have their photographs taken and do other stuff that you do in shoes when you’re drunk. The casino brought in high level museum experts to advise them on how to stop people touching the art (and each other in the art) and came up with the barrier system shown above. It didn’t work. Guests just climbed over or crawled under the ropes. Casino management is now deciding whether to hire a guard to stand next to the sculpture and tell revellers to - like - shoo.
