via The New York Times
This years Thanksgiving Day parade is getting an injection of Japanese cool as Takashi Murakami reportedly took two bows during a brief Shinto ceremony at the inflation of his KaiKai and Kiki character balloons during the inflation ceremony last night. Murakami’s addition is part of a larger curatorial project that began in 2005 to bring international artists into the parade. Murakami described his choice of characters for the two balloons as follows.
“They are cute yet fearsome,” he wrote, “modern and yet connected to the past. They embody eccentric beauty.”
An interesting play by the parade organizers to garner a more international and multicultural audience in a city which epitomizes the idea of a global melting pot.
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Out 'N Front 