How much fun would it be to see thousands of birds scattered around one of your favorite museums? If you were at Victoria and Albert Museum for one particular day back in 2006, you could have experienced this yourself. Trophy was a temporary installation by artist Clare Twomey which was comprised of 4,000 blue clay birds. Perched all over the ground and around some of the museum's most famous historic sculptures, these little blue birds were just asking to be taken home!
This interactive exhibition was meant to challenge conventional craft and in Twomey's words it “played with notions of value, permanence and the culture of collecting.” Interestingly, within five hours of opening, the public had “stolen” every single one of these birds. The most interesting part? No one formally invited visitors to take the birds home, people just followed the behavior of others in the space.