Misfit Cup Liberation Project

The Plains Art Museum

Right now, in the recesses of your cupboard, resides a cup. This cup has been long forgotten and left to sit idle for too long.

Every time you open your cupboard to fix a drink, you pass this cup by in favor of more cherished alternatives..

What sort of cups?

You know the ones.

A snowman shaped cup given as a gift from a relative, one that you cringed and said thank you... at a family get-together.

How about that plastic cactus-shaped martini glass? Whoever thought this was a good idea?

Why is it still in your cupboard?

Liberate those cups!

With the Misfit Cup Liberation Project, I have created an orphanage of sorts, a collectively curated tribute to bad design, or perhaps.. a memory you are ready to leave behind.

I asked participants to bring their favorite rejected cups to the Museum, which I will then trade for a brand new, hand made cup! Their cups will then reside alongside 99 other rejected cups as a collection of the best of the worst. Along with the cups, I have asked for a story about the cup, how it was acquired and now why are you willing to part with it.

This project will travel to 10 additional cities after Fargo, with a goal of collecting 1000 cups worldwide, I am fascinated with what we keep and what we discard. In the end, I will assemble this collection, as a cultural anthropological study of what is at the back of our collective closets.