What's the story behind Fort Collins' giant Campbell's soup can?

If you're driving near Colorado State University in Fort Collins, be sure to take a quick detour down Remington Street.

One of its more picturesque stretches just north of Prospect Road is lined with stately older homes dwarfed by the even statelier University Center for the Arts, a red brick behemoth built nearly a century ago to house Fort Collins High School.

You can take in its impressive columns, its imposing cupola-crowned portico or the swath of flowers that unfold before it as part of CSU's Annual Flower Trial Garden, which is planted each year from late-May through October. Then, of course, there's the giant Campbell's soup can on its front lawn.

The can — a to-the-tee replica that towers over onlookers — has been part of CSU lore for 43 years, and on public display outside the UCA for more than 15.

So why is it there? That's a long story involving Andy Warhol, a big dream and, tangentially, John Denver.

Why there is a giant soup can in Fort Collins

It all began more than 40 years ago when Peter Jacobs, chairman of Colorado State University's art department at the time, invited pop artist Andy Warhol to visit the university in 1981.

Jacobs visited Warhol at his studio in New York and used Warhol's close friendship with Carbondale art collector Kimiko Powers, along with the promise of a visit with John Denver, to lure him to Fort Collins, according to an interview Jacobs did with the Coloradoan in 2016.

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Warhol agreed, and in preparation Jacobs commissioned the creation of three large-scale replicas of a Campbell's tomato soup can as an homage to Warhol's 1962 work, "Campbell's Soup Cans."

Jacobs said he originally wanted to have a silo along Interstate 25 painted to look like a Campbell's soup can, but silo dimensions weren't quite right for the project.

Instead, Jacobs found a 50-foot-long pipe from a scrap-iron dealer in Denver. It was cut into three sections and transported to Fort Collins nestled inside grain trucks.

They were painted by CSU art student Bruce Conway under the direction of Warhol, who requested the cans be copied directly from a can at the supermarket, even down to the barcode.

Warhol was flown into town by John Denver, and over the course of several days that September, visited a bull farm, briefly hiked along the Poudre River, stayed at the still-standing Best Western University Inn and stood before a crowd of thousands at CSU's visual art buildings, where he met fans and signed objects, including the three soup cans commissioned for his visit.

The fate of CSU's famous soup cans

After being signed into CSU history, the soup cans remained on the Visual Arts building's lawn into the mid-1980s. One was eventually sold to a museum in Japan and another was placed in CSU storage, where it remains today.

CSU purchased the UCA building in 1997, a couple years after Poudre School District had moved Fort Collins High School students to their current home at 3400 Lambkin Way, according to CSU.

Over the next decade it was slowly transformed into the University Center for the Arts, which now houses the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art and the Avenir Museum of Design and Merchandising, per to the UCA's website.

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The UCA was dedicated in 2008 — the same year the university put its third Campbell's soup can replica on public display on the west side of the building. It is considered part of the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art's collection, according to the museum's director and chief curator Lynn Boland.

It attracts its fair share of mischief, with several incidents of egging, graffiti and vigilante art connected to the can over the years. But it also lures onlookers to the UCA.

"To have works that are appropriate for public display is exciting," Boland said. "It signals that there is more great art to see inside, but also gives people a chance to interact with art in their daily lives."

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fort Collins history: Here's the story behind CSU's giant soup can