Louise Bourgeois' Maman

Last year, when I went to Japan, we visited Roppongi and saw this giant sculpture of a spider.

Since War of the Worlds had been released the previous year, I overheard people who believed that perhaps this was a movie tie-in. I knew this probably wasn't the case as Martian war machines have three legs, but I took photographs of the sculpture, and then forgot about it, until I recently saw this photo taken in London:

Thirty-five foot tall spiders made out of bronze aren't something you see everyday, but this time I had more information. The work is called "Maman", and the original one made out of stainless steel is located at the Tate museum at London. The sculptor is Louise Bourgeois, and there are six bronze full-size castings of her work located at:

• National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
  
• State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
  
• Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
  
• Mori Art Museum, Roppongi, Tokyo
  
• Samsung Museum of Modern Art, Seoul
  
• Havana, Cuba
  

Now, the last time I was in San Francisco, we drove by the Embarcadero, and I noticed a smaller spider done in the same style. The one in San Francisco is not "Maman", but the smaller "Crouching Spider" done by the same artist.