A roundabout dog (Swedish : rondellhund) is a form of street installation that began in Sweden during the autumn of 2006 and continued for the rest of the year. There have been sporadic subsequent recurrences. The phenomenon consists of anonymous people placing homemade dog sculptures, typically made of wood (or sometimes plastic, metal or textile) in roundabouts. Occurrences were reported all over Sweden, and the phenomenon also spread to other countries, including Spain after it was mentioned on television. [1] A Swedish tabloid paper placed one at Piccadilly Circus. [2]
The roundabout dogs started appearing in Linköping, Östergötland, Sweden after a sculptured dog that was part of the official roundabout installation Cirkulation II (English: Circulation II) by sculptor Stina Opitz had been vandalised and later removed. The original dog had been made of concrete, [3] and Opitz was planning to make a new version of it after the vandalism, [4] when someone placed a homemade wooden dog [5] on the roundabout. The dog was given a concrete dogbone [6] by another anonymous artist. Soon after the media reported these developments, roundabout dogs started appearing in various places around the country.
In some smaller towns where there were no roundabouts, dog sculptures were placed in ordinary intersections with traffic islands.
In July 2007, artist Lars Vilks incited controversy by creating drawings for an art exhibition, which depicted Muhammed as a roundabout dog. The publication of these images in Swedish newspapers led to Vilks being subjected to threats of violence and put under police protection until his death in October 2021.
In 2009, similar dogs appeared on some of the roundabouts in Hemel Hempstead in England. [7]
Laika was a Soviet space dog who was one of the first animals in space and the first to orbit the Earth. A stray mongrel from the streets of Moscow, she flew aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft, launched into low orbit on 3 November 1957. As the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, Laika's survival was never expected. She died of overheating hours into the flight, on the craft's fourth orbit.
An omphalos is a religious stone artefact. In Ancient Greek, the word ὀμφᾰλός means "navel". Among the Ancient Greeks, it was a widespread belief that Delphi was the center of the world. According to the myths regarding the founding of the Delphic Oracle, Zeus, in his attempt to locate the center of the earth, launched two eagles from the two ends of the world, and the eagles, starting simultaneously and flying at equal speed, crossed their paths above the area of Delphi, and so was the place where Zeus placed the stone.
The Labrador Retriever or simply Labrador, is a British breed of retriever gun dog. It was developed in the United Kingdom from fishing dogs imported from the colony of Newfoundland, and was named after the Labrador region of that colony. It is among the most commonly kept dogs in several countries, particularly in the Western world.
The Jack Russell Terrier is a small terrier that has its origins in fox hunting in England. It is principally white-bodied and smooth, rough or broken-coated and can be any colour.
Hemel Hempstead is a town in the Dacorum district in Hertfordshire, England. It is 24 miles (39 km) northwest of London, and is part of the Greater London Urban Area. The population at the 2011 census was 97,500.
A sun dog or mock sun, also called a parhelion in meteorology, is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that consists of a bright spot to one or both sides of the Sun. Two sun dogs often flank the Sun within a 22° halo.
Hachikō was a Japanese Akita dog remembered for his remarkable loyalty to his owner, Hidesaburō Ueno, for whom he continued to wait for over nine years following Ueno's death.
Nerikes Allehanda is a daily newspaper based in Örebro, Sweden, and distributed across Örebro County. It was founded in 1843 as a weekly paper and became a daily in 1894. The paper is owned by the media group LT Liberala Tidningar AB and the stated position of the editorial is "independently liberal".
Ladonia is a micronation, proclaimed in 1996 as the result of a years-long court battle between artist Lars Vilks and local authorities over two sculptures. The claimed territory is part of the natural reserve of Kullaberg in southern Sweden.
The St. John's water dog, also known as the St. John's dog or the lesser Newfoundland, is an extinct landrace of domestic dog from Newfoundland. Little is known of the types that went into its genetic makeup, although it was probably a random-bred mix of old English, Irish and Portuguese working dogs. They were favourite dogs of fishermen because they had extraordinary qualities like good temperament and working behaviour. The number of St. John's water dogs started declining by the beginning of the 20th century. By the early 1980s, the landrace was extinct.
Lars Endel Roger Vilks was a Swedish visual artist and activist who was known for the controversy surrounding his drawings of Muhammad. Many years earlier he had created the sculptures Nimis and Arx, made of driftwood and rock, respectively. The area where the sculptures are located was proclaimed by Vilks as an independent country, "Ladonia".
The Lars Vilks Muhammad drawings controversy began in July 2007 with a series of drawings by Swedish artist Lars Vilks that depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a roundabout dog. Several art galleries in Sweden declined to show the drawings, citing security concerns and fear of violence. The controversy gained international attention after the Örebro-based regional newspaper Nerikes Allehanda published one of the drawings on 18 August as part of an editorial on self-censorship and freedom of religion.
Boeing Galleries are a pair of outdoor exhibition spaces within Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, USA. The spaces are located along the south and north mid-level terraces, above and east of Wrigley Square and the Crown Fountain. In a conference at the Chicago Cultural Center, Boeing President and Chief Executive Officer James Bell to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley announced Boeing would make a $5 million grant to fund both the construction of and an endowment for the space.
The Cancún Underwater Museum is a non-profit organization based in Cancún, Mexico devoted to the art of conservation. The museum has a total of 500 sculptures, by a series of international and local sculptors, with three different galleries submerged between three and six meters deep in the ocean at the Cancún National Marine Park. The museum was thought up by Marine Park Director Jaime González Cano, with the objective of saving the nearby coral reefs by providing an alternative destination for divers. It was started in 2009 and officially opened in November 2010.
Lift Off is a public artwork by American artist David Black, located at the CityVista Condominium at the intersection of 5th St NW & K St NW in the Mount Vernon Triangle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., United States. Lift Off was created through DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
Doge is an Internet meme that became popular in 2013. The meme typically consists of a picture of Kabosu, a Shiba Inu dog, accompanied by multicolored text in Comic Sans font in the foreground. The text, representing a kind of internal monologue, is deliberately written in a form of broken English.
Dog Bowl is a 2002 outdoor sculpture by dog photographer William Wegman, located in the North Park Blocks in Portland, Oregon, United States.
Omfalos is a concrete and rock sculpture attributed to the Swedish artist Lars Vilks. It was forcefully removed from a natural reserve area where it had been unlawfully erected, and currently belongs to the collections of the Moderna Museet.
On the afternoon of 25 September 2021, a group of anonymous feminists intervened in the Christopher Columbus roundabout on Paseo de la Reforma Avenue, Mexico City. On an empty plinth surrounded by protective fences, they installed a wooden antimonumenta, a guerrilla sculpture that calls for justice for the recurrent acts of violence against women in Mexico. It was originally called Antimonumenta Vivas Nos Queremos, subsequently known as Justicia, and depicts a purple woman holding her left arm raised and the word justice carved into a support on the back. Additionally, the Columbus roundabout was also symbolically renamed the Glorieta de las mujeres que luchan.