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Fred Prouser / Reuters
A woman carries a a baby past a 340-ton megalith rock, which is to be part of artist Michael Heizer's artwork "Levitated Mass", as it is seen on a transport vehicle in the middle of the road, about 5 miles from downtown Los Angeles on Friday. The massive granite boulder is on the last leg of an 11-night, 106-mile journey to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where it will become the centerpiece of artist Heizer's 'Levitated Mass.' It is expected to arrive in the early morning hours on Saturday and will take weeks to put in place before the installation opens to the public in late spring or early summer. The $10 million cost to move the boulder was paid for by the museum through private donors.
Fred Prouser / Reuters
The 340-ton megalith rock, which is to be part of artist Michael Heizer's artwork "Levitated Mass", seen from underneath its transport vehicle.
Below, a wider night-time shot showing the whole contraption:
Ringo H.W. Chiu / AP
A 340-ton boulder is hoisted onto a giant trailer move along Granite Hill Drive early Wednesday Feb. 29 in Jurupa Valley, Calif.
AP reports that the rock's journey was delayed repeatedly as 22 cities weighed in on its path:
The museum finally worked out a route that went around freeway overpasses, stayed away from bridges and avoided narrow streets to enough of a degree that everybody was satisfied. The total project is costing $5 million to $10 million.
"It's funny, the Egyptians didn't have rubber wheels and diesel trucks to move things. But they also didn't have 22 cities through which they had to move their stones," museum director Michael Govan noted recently.
Leave a Comment:
Art has stopped being art. This is not art, it is something else, a comic absurdity. Museums are repositories of the fruits of oppression and possession and status, far more than they are of art. People with money paying millions to move a stone while people loose their homes, politicians invade the uterus and immigrants hide their children in the shadows cast by an increasing police state.....the art of the absurd, at best.
Don't forget all the traffic backups and delays it probably caused.
W.F., I love art but 100% agree with you on this one
Five to 10 million dollars spent just for transport to somewhere most Americans will never even see. Please don't mention that it was from private donors - that just makes it worse.
The artist should have just Levitated the Mass and that may not have been art but would have been impressive.
As Jay Leno would say, "how lazy are we getting here in American when instead of going out to the country to see the rocks where they should be we hire someone to haul them into the city for us to see!!!" Beyond absurd!!!