After nearly half a year of delays, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s 340-ton monolith, sitting in a Riverside County quarry, will begin its long, circuitous journey to the museum Tuesday night.
The boulder will hit the road on its custom-built transporter about 10 p.m. and will move at about 5 miles per hour. It will travel at night only. It’s due to arrive at LACMA early March 10.
Beginning the following Monday, the boulder will be positioned outside the Resnick Pavilion, where it will form the center of artist Michael Heizer’s sculpture “Levitated Mass.”
The rock will travel through four counties and 22 cities, so it’s no surprise that the numerous delays have been mostly due to permit issues — not to mention the logistics of moving a two-story-high chunk of granite, weighing 680,000 pounds, through congested urban areas. More than 100 utilities will be affected by the rock’s passage, and utility crews will travel with the rock to temporarily remove power lines, traffic lights and other obstacles, then immediately restore them once the rock has passed through.
The rock’s first stopping point, at 5 a.m. Wednesday, will be at Mission Boulevard and Bellegrave Avenue in Ontario.
Heizer will not be at the quarry to see his rock off; but museum director Michael Govan plans to give a short address.
Deborah Vankin
Los Angeles Times
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February 28, 2012 at 11:20 am
Gabriella
Just because something is possible to do, does not necessarily mean that it ought to be done. This is where aesthetics, applied science and economics and I part company. It might be somewhat more fitting for Heizer to slice this behemoth into mangeable portions, carry the sections by himself to LA, and reassemble the rock at the LACMA site, but of course his age my prevent this. This 2012 retelling of the Sysiphus myth might be more meaningful, if carried out in totality by him. G