The Turkey as Social Ornament and Installation

The turkey is the monumental sculpture of cooking: it has a monstrous scale, it is heroic, it has to please a lot of different people. Like bridges and libraries, it’s real function is ceremonial, the carving of the turkey and the cutting of the ribbon being roughly equivalent; after that, it’s just a large nuisance that people drive past that might as well just be gathering pigeon shit. Like monumental public sculpture, no one expects it to be really any good, just iconic and hard to miss.