Peter Larkin and the P-Funk Mothership in the Smithsonian

	The Mothership lands on stage at the Coliseum in Los Angeles. Photo Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Jules Fisher shares the news that the contribution of his collaborator on this production, scenic designer Peter Larkin, to the design of Parliament-Funkadelic's Mothership has been recognized in the catalogue of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC (catalogue description available online at https://s.si.edu/2Ipobp3). This replica prop in the permanent collection is a near exact copy of the slightly larger Mothership that was used in performances during the height of the band's popularity from 1976-1981. This particular prop was built in the mid-1990s and used on the Mothership Reconnection Tour.

The P Funk Mothership, also known as The Holy Mothership, is a space vehicle belonging to Dr. Funkenstein, an alter ego of George Clinton. An integral part of the P-Funk mythology, the Mothership existed conceptually as a fictional vehicle of funk deliverance and as a physical prop central to Parliament-Funkadelic concerts during the 1970s and 1990s. (http://bit.ly/2IXZj74)

Larkin is a Tony Award-winning scenic designer (1954, Ondine and The Teahouse of the August Moon; 1956, No Time for Sergeants and Inherit the Wind), and then moved on to the cinema, designing films including Tootsie (1982), Three Men and a Baby (1987), and Get Shorty (1996), among others. Additionally, he is the creator of a pop-up book about burlesque entitled "Panties Inferno." He graduated from the Deerfield Academy and Yale in the early 1950s.