Rubber Duck was created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman. In a 2013 interview, Hofman stated that his initial inspiration came from a 2001 museum visit combined with a popular yoghurt advertisement in the Netherlands in 2000 or 2001. He searched to find what he considered the perfect toy duck and settled on a design by a Hong Kong company called Tolo Toys. The yoghurt company Yogho!Yogho! financed the work.
Sculpture
Design
The size of the rubber duck varies. His largest rubber duck, in Saint-Nazaire, France, measured, width, length, height of. The rubber duck in Beijing was, and the rubber duck in Seokchon lake was with a weight of. The rubber duck was constructed with more than 200 pieces of PVC. All the pieces of PVC are connected by hand with sewing machines. In order to enhance the duck's durability, they added another piece on top of one layer. On the rubber duck, there is an opening at the back of the body so that architects and staff can perform a body check of the rubber duck. In addition, there is an electric propeller fan in its body so that it can be inflated at any time, in either good or bad weather. The loops that are in the pontoon edges of the rubber duck are connected to the fence of the lake by 16 ropes that are designed to hold the rubber duck still without it floating away by the waves of the lake water. On the bottom of the rubber duck, there is a waterproof cable that gets the energy from a power distribution board near the lake to make the electric propeller fan work. The electric propeller fan also keeps the air circulating inside of the rubber duck, so that the air always keeps the shape of the rubber duck sculpture.
Display
Since 2007, the ducks have been on display in Amsterdam, Baku, Lommel, Osaka, Sydney Harbour, Sao Paulo, and Hong Kong. It was on display in Pittsburgh as its first U.S. destination, from 27 September 2013 through 20 October 2013. Over 1,000,000 people are reported to have visited the duck in Pittsburgh. Its second United States appearance was in Norfolk, Virginia, from 17–26 May 2014, floating in The Hague Inlet in front of the Chrysler Museum of Art. In October 2014, South Korea's Lotte group asked for the giant rubber duck to celebrate the opening of the new Lotte World Mall, the country's largest shopping mall that also has a skyscraper, Lotte World Tower. The tower is located between the Han River and Seokchon Lake, where the giant rubber duck was placed. However, the duck deflated during the exhibition. In 2009, while it was on display in Belgium, vandals stabbed Rubber Duck 42 times. While on display in Hong Kong in 2013, it deflated on 15 May. It was re-inflated and was again on exhibition on 20 May. It was damaged and deflated again in Taiwan on 2 November after an earthquake, before bursting at Keelung, Taiwan, on 31 December 2013. The duck was reported as having been swept away in recent floods in China. On 30 September 2017, during its exhibition in Santiago, the duck accidentally crashed with a sign, tearing a hole on its structure and causing it to deflate. A "counterfeit" version of the duck went on tour around Canada in 2017 for Canada's sesquicentennial. The tour drew some controversy as it was seen by some as a waste of government spending; however reports later found that the sculpture generated profits for the events it attended. This version was not approved by Studio Florentijn Hofman.
Censorship
On 4 June 2013, Sina Weibo, China's most popular microblog, blocked the terms "Today", "Tonight", "June 4", and "Big Yellow Duck", because Chinese activists were photoshopping the Rubber Duck sculpture into the Tank Man photo of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. If the term "Big Yellow Duck" was searched, a message would say that according to relevant laws, statutes, and policies, the results of the search could not be shown.
List of locations
The Rubber Duck has made appearances in the following locations:
