Lahore is the fictional creation of Matt Zigler, whose pigeon exhibit just helped him earn his master's degree from the university.
Zigler arrives in Philadelphia this weekend to dismantle his project but says most of it will be open Saturday.
A resident of North Carolina, near Chapel Hill, Zigler has lived in Philadelphia part-time while pursuing his master of fine arts degree. Initially, he shared Woody Allen's view of pigeons as "rats with wings."
"It was sort of ... there are mice in my dorm room and pigeons on the street," Zigler said.
But one day in the summer of 2007, the 33-year-old art teacher noticed a beige pigeon amid a gray flock. That got him thinking about how people so often fail to notice the "little dramas, narratives, and moments of profound value" around them.
His brain took flight, pursuing pigeon information with the speed - the birds can fly more than 60 m.p.h. - of his subject.
He pored over two recent books, Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird, and Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan . . . and the World.
His case for changing our understanding of pigeons goes something like this:
We love doves and imbue them with spiritual meaning. Scientifically, doves and pigeons are practically the same bird.
Through most of our history, people held pigeons in high esteem. During World War II, a pigeon named G.I. Joe carried a message that saved 1,000 people. Squab is considered a delicacy, though Zigler notes that it's a baby pigeon. People once ate pigeons more, but as industrial farming took hold, chicken became the preferred bird.
