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The Installation

Description:

The Installation

On January 4, 2007, on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the South Pole station, Miami artist Xavier Cortada arrived at the South Pole and planted 51 differently-colored flags along a 500-meter stretch of a moving ice sheet. The last flag was planted where South Pole stood in 1956, when the Pole became permanently inhabited. The first, where the South Pole stands fifty years later.

Each flag is marked with its respective year, and with the coordinates of a place on Earth the artist selected as important in "moving the world forward" during that year (e.g.: 1957 is Sputnik, 1963 is the March on Washington, 1969 is the Lunar Landing, 1997 is the Kyoto Accord) while scientists worked in the South Pole.

The Marker flags were exhibited at the Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium prior to being installed in the South Pole .For more information visit http://www.miamisci.org/www/exhibits/markers/