Please don’t clown. This is “creepy” art.
A public art installation of two giant clown heads in downtown Boston is getting tourists and Boston residents talking, but not everyone is laughing.
The clowns are part of Boston’s downtown business improvement district “Winter Active” A walkable art experience launched this month that hopes to provide people exploring downtown with a “fun experience at every corner.”
The clown is one of 16 exhibits, but some passersby have called it “creepy.”
Photos and videos of the installation shared by BID received mixed reactions. Instagram Users racked up over 900 likes with comments saying the piece “looks like something out of the original Batman movie.”
Titled “Endgame (Nagg & Nell),” this unique piece features two inflatable clown heads with shocked expressions wedged between two buildings in Harlem Place Alley. Masu.
Artist Max Streicher told Axios He was trying to make the inflatable clowns look “kind of alarmed and just stunned and shocked by the condition they’re in.”
Another internet commentator called the red-nosed clowns “very creepy,” and some Instagram users compared them to the work of Japanese horror manga artist Junji Ito.
One critic called it a “perfect metaphor” for the city, while another wrote, “Boston has an entire city full of clowns.”
One Bostonian took X Think, “Okay, whose idea was it to add a creepy clown to the already menacing overall atmosphere?”
Another joked, “Everyone who ever wronged me is now the head of a creepy clown in downtown Boston.”
There will always be detractors, but many were quick to sing “Send In The Clowns.”
“I didn’t know about this. Thanks for sharing,” one Instagram user commented with a heart eyes emoji. “Exciting things are happening downtown,” another added.
“We met them on Saturday and then went for a walk to the Brattle Book Shop. It was so nice to see everyone having such a good time with this. Boston has great things to do. There are so many,” another added.
Winteractive includes eight artists and design teams from Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, many of whom will be presented in the United States for the first time, the Downtown Boston BID said in a press release.
“This exhibition will energize and illuminate our streets this winter, bringing internationally acclaimed artists to Boston for shopping, dining, live performances, office work and more,” said Michael Nichols, president of the organization. “There will be intermittent visits to downtown,” he said.
The 16 sites installed on January 17 will remain in the city until April 14, the Sunday before the Boston Marathon.
Winteractive has already received a lot of attention. The Boston Fire Department must remove a lifelike sculpture of a fisherman above a Chipotle restaurant after receiving multiple calls about concerns that it looked like a real person was sitting on the roof. did not become. The Boston Globe reported.
The piece was then moved to Macy’s one-story building, not far from the rest of the installation.
The Post has reached out to Streicher for comment.
