Message in a bottle

This message in a bottle arrived in Middlesbrough over 22 years ago. It has come to rest outside the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.

The iconic sculpture was created by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.
Fascinated by the history of Captain Cook, the artists started with the idea of a ship for the sculpture, but then decided to opt for the image of a message in a bottle. Cook’s journals provided the sentence wrapped around the outside: “We had every advantage we could desire in observing the whole of the passage of the Planet Venus over the Sun’s disc.”

When not being admired as a piece of public art, it also seems popular with the local kids as a climbing frame.