Flier from The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, promoting the current exhibition of Pollock artworks, including ‘Mural on Indian Red Ground,’ 1950, on loan from Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, shown at center left.
TOKYO (AFP) – A masterpiece by US artist Jackson Pollock is being exhibited at a Tokyo museum in its first trip outside Iran in more than three decades.
The Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art is holding an exhibition of Pollock (1912-1956) including “Mural on Indian Red Ground” on loan from the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, which has an estimated value of $250 million.
“Mural on Indian Red Ground,” purchased by the wife of the pro-West shah 35 years ago, was proclaimed national property in the 1979 revolution when the royal family was overthrown.
Also on show are “No. 7, 1950” and “No. 11, 1949,” on loan from the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the art museum of Indiana University, as well as many more Pollock works borrowed from the United States and Europe.
The exhibition, “Jackson Pollock: A Centennial Retrospective,” will run until May 6.
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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Flier from The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, promoting the current exhibition of Pollock artworks, including ‘Mural on Indian Red Ground,’ 1950, on loan from Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, shown at center left.
Architect Frank Gehry, designer of the Eisenhower Memorial. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Famed architect Frank Gehry said he is open to changes to a planned Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington to address objections from the 34th president’s family that the design doesn’t put enough emphasis on his achievements as president and World War II military leader.
Eisenhower family members shared their concerns at a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday, where a letter from Gehry was also introduced as testimony.
Gehry’s design calls for a memorial park framed by large metal tapestries depicting Eisenhower’s boyhood home in Kansas. Two large carved stones would depict Ike as president and as military hero, and a statue of a young Eisenhower would appear to marvel at what his life would become. The memorial would be built just off the National Mall, near the National Air and Space Museum.
The family objects to the tapestries and to depicting Eisenhower in his youth, saying it focuses too much on his humble roots, rather than his accomplishments as Republican president from 1953 to 1961 and as supreme Allied commander in Europe during World War II.
Gehry, whose other famous works include the Guggenheim Museum in Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, said his design does celebrate Eisenhower’s accomplishments with heroic images and with his words carved in stone.
“My detractors say that I have missed the point, and that I am trying to diminish the stature of this great man,” Gehry wrote. “I assure you that my only intent is to celebrate and honor this world hero and visionary leader.”
If the memorial organizers and the family “conclude that the sculpture of young Eisenhower is an inappropriate way to honor him, then I will be open to exploring other options with them,” Gehry wrote.
Gehry noted that he has met with Eisenhower’s granddaughters, Susan and Anne Eisenhower, and is exploring other design ideas to respond to their concerns. Options include adding a list of accomplishments, more quotations from Eisenhower or additional images in stone to show his achievements, he said.
Members of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission, which selected Gehry for the project, also responded Tuesday to criticism of the architect’s design.
Rep. Leonard Boswell of Iowa, a member of the federal commission, testified that he had his own reservations about depicting a young Eisenhower at first but came to realize it would be a draw for the millions of children who visit the nearby Air and Space Museum.
“The youngsters will come out of that museum and just naturally walk across the street and see what happened in a person’s life,” Boswell said. “Who would have ever thought, Abilene Kan., somebody would end up as supreme Allied commander and president of this great country? So I started really falling in love with this concept.”
Boswell said the commission is ready to move on and build the memorial “in the best possible way.”
Alfred Geduldig, who was appointed to the memorial commission by President Bill Clinton in 1999, said after the hearing that he doesn’t know if anything can be done to regain the family’s support. Eisenhower’s grandson, David Eisenhower, played a central role in the planning until December, he said, and the remaining commissioners still support the design.
“This probably tells a story of a man’s greatness better than any other memorial,” Geduldig said. “This is Eisenhower, a man who was born in the horse-and-buggy era and led America into the Space Age all in his lifetime. This is the dreams of a young man who then had the greatest resume of any president in history.”
Still, Susan Eisenhower said her family’s objections remain largely unanswered. She told the House panel that her family has been “inundated” with comments from the public and that the memorial should be redesigned.
“Great monuments in our country make simple statements that encapsulate the reason the memorial has been erected in the first place,” she told the House panel.
The Washington Monument remembers George Washington as the “father of our country,” and the Lincoln Memorial declares that Abraham Lincoln “saved the Union,” she said. Meanwhile, she said, metal tapestries in the modern era were generally found in the Communist world.
“One of the main flaws of the current proposal is that Eisenhower’s contribution to the nation is not the central theme of the design,” Susan Eisenhower said. “The Eisenhower our nation wants to celebrate is not a dreamy boy but a real man who faced unthinkable choices, took personal responsibility and did his duty with modesty and humility.”
She said survivors of the Holocaust have complained to the family that metal tapestries would look like chain-link fences, reminiscent of concentration camps. Others, she said, have said metal scrims would be an iron curtain, evoking Cold War imagery.
The family prefers a smaller, simple memorial, she said.
Rodney Cook, president of the Atlanta-based National Monuments Foundation, bemoaned Gehry’s “narrative literalism” in representing Eisenhower’s humble Kansas roots and trying to “redefine what it means to build a memorial.”
“If you go with this new direction, we might as well tear down the Lincoln Memorial and put a log cabin there,” he said.
Many memorial designs have drawn criticism, including the World War II Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the last presidential memorial that honors Franklin D. Roosevelt. Divisions over the design of that monument, including strong objections by the Roosevelt family, stalled the project for decades and led to three separate design competitions.
The congressional hearing could pressure memorial planners to make changes, but the House panel has no direct role in approving the design. Final approval of Gehry’s concept from the National Capital Planning Commission, which approves architecture in the nation’s capital, has been delayed amid the ongoing objections.
Several lawmakers Tuesday said they were reluctant to wade into the dispute.
“I can’t help but feel we’re micromanaging something well outside our purview,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona. “I don’t think this subcommittee, the full committee or Congress is the appropriate place to litigate a memorial design or a potential family dispute.”
Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, who called the hearing, said he hopes memorial organizers can achieve broad consensus because there’s only “one chance to make this right.” But Rep. John Garamendi of California said art is always controversial and some memorials remain so after they are built.
Organizers hope to break ground late this year on the $112 million construction, which has received federal funding to begin.
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Eisenhower Memorial Commission: http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org
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Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-03-21-12 1321GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Architect Frank Gehry, designer of the Eisenhower Memorial. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
The Kroller-Muller Museum owns the second largest number of works by Vincent van Gogh in the world, including ‘Cafe Terrace at Night,’ 1888, oil on canvas. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AFP) – A still life depicting a bouquet of flowers painted by Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh in 1886 has been authenticated in a study which used a new x-ray technique, a Dutch museum spokeswoman said Tuesday.
“With this new radiography, there was no more doubt,” Kroller-Muller Museum spokeswoman Sylvia Gentenaar told AFP.
Still life with meadow flowers and roses, in Kroller-Muller’s possession since 1974, was declared a genuine Van Gogh notably after some particular characteristics were identified within the pigments used in the painting.
The new study also revealed Van Gogh painted the still life over an earlier painting of two wrestlers, said Gentenaar of the painting which from Tuesday will be on display at the museum in Otterloo in the eastern Netherlands.
The study, done by Delft and Antwerp universities, the Van Gogh and Kroller-Muller museums and the DESY research center for particle physics in Hamburg, Germany, showed the wrestlers to be of a typical Van Gogh design.
“The wrestlers are not completely naked. They wear some sort of pants which is characteristic of the Antwerp Academy, which Van Gogh attended” in 1885-86, Gentenaar said.
The painting was given “anonymous” status in 2003 after being considered for many years as a possible Van Gogh.
Born in the Netherlands on March 30, 1853, Van Gogh settled in Paris in 1886 where he was influenced by the Impressionists.
Van Gogh died of a gunshot wound—most believe to be self-inflicted—at the age of 37 in Auvers, France, in July 1890.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The Kroller-Muller Museum owns the second largest number of works by Vincent van Gogh in the world, including ‘Cafe Terrace at Night,’ 1888, oil on canvas. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
‘Waiting for Her Brave’s Return,’ Charles M. Russell, watercolor on paper, 12 x 15 inches. Price realized: $375,000. Image courtesy C.M. Russell Museum.
GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP) – Three original Charlie Russell watercolors exceeded expectations and combined to fetch more than $1 million at an art auction.
The three works by the famed Western artist sold Saturday at The Russell: the Sale to Benefit the C.M. Russell Museum, the Great Falls Tribune reported.
Waiting for her Brave’s Return and Roping a Steer each sold for $375,000. A third watercolor, Indian on Horseback, went for $300,000.
“The market’s up,” auctioneer Troy Black said at the beginning of the night. “There’s a good buzz in town.”
His prediction was accurate. A pen-and-ink work called A Bunch of Riders sold for $100,000—double the preauction estimate. Other works, including art not created by Russell, also did well.
Officials put preliminary gross sales for the auction at $2.75 million. They said adding in the 10 to 13 percent buyer’s premium would likely push the total past $3 million.
The auction is part of Western Art Week in Great Falls, held the same month as the birthday of Russell, born March 19, 1864. It benefits the nonprofit museum.
“This is going phenomenal,” said Channing Hartelius, secretary of the Russell Museum’s board of directors.
Another Russell watercolor called The Bucker sold for $60,000, and was then donated to the Russell Museum, board Chairman Joe A. Masterson said.
Smith’s Fork Land & Cattle Co. purchased a Russell work called Center-Fire Man on a Bronc for $170,000—well past its estimate of $45,000.
The auction included some other artists as well. An oil painting by the late Nicolai Fechin sold for $100,000, better than the estimate.
Separate auctions not associated with the Russell Museum were held earlier and also did well. Officials with the for-profit March in Montana said they grossed $1.8 million over two days, its best result in 25 years participating in Western Art Week.
“We see people spending money now,” said Bob Nelson, owner of the Manitou Galleries, which partnered to hold the auction with the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction of Reno, Nev.
Some big items in the March in Montana auction included an oil painting by John Clymer called Application of Pigments in Early Hopi Pottery Making. It sold for $55,000, more than double the estimate.
A large Navajo Ganado weaving measuring about 17 feet by 10 feet sold for $35,000. And a Lakota Sioux beaded dress went for $22,000.
“I was surprised at the overall strength of the auction,” Nelson said.
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Information from: Great Falls Tribune, http://www.greatfallstribune.com
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-03-18-12 2321GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
‘Roping a Steer, 1898,’ Charles M. Russell, watercolor, 11 3/4 x 17 1/4 inches. Price realized: $375,000. Image courtesy C.M. Russell Museum.‘Waiting for Her Brave’s Return,’ Charles M. Russell, watercolor on paper, 12 x 15 inches. Price realized: $375,000. Image courtesy C.M. Russell Museum.
Portrait of Maria Gratz by Thomas Sully. Gift of Maria and William Roberts. Photo by Douglas A. Lockhard. Image courtesy Rosenbach Museum and Library.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) – It might be the first time a separated couple got back together thanks to their great-great-great granddaughter.
The attractive young couple is Benjamin and Maria Gratz, or more accurately their portraits, which were painted in 1831 by noted English-born Philadelphia artist Thomas Sully, but somehow parted ways an unknown number of years ago.
Benjamin has been hanging for decades at the Rosenbach Museum & Library along with other members of the Gratz family, who were prominent in early Philadelphia’s business and philanthropic worlds.
The museum, stumped regarding Maria’s whereabouts, expanded their investigation from auction and estate records to the Internet.
A post titled “The Lost Portraits of Mrs. Benjamin Gratz: Have you seen Maria?” went online last June on a museum docent’s scholarly blog about educator and humanitarian Rebecca Gratz, the sister-in-law of Maria Cecil Gist Gratz. The posting included a black-and-white photo of a small copy made of the portrait long ago.
“Three weeks later I get a message on my phone: ‘I think I may be someone you’re looking for,’” museum curator Judith Guston said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
The caller was the great-great-great-granddaughter of the pretty woman in the lost portrait. Though it wasn’t exactly lost—not as far as Maria Gratz Roberts of Atlanta was concerned.
“It was in my house,” said Gratz Roberts, who pronounces her first name “mar-EYE’-ah” just like her namesake did. “I’m very interested in genealogy was looking up some information on the family, that’s how it started. I saw the article about the missing portrait and I was very surprised.”
Benjamin and Maria Gratz were in their 30s when the portraits were painted during their trip from Lexington, Ky., to visit Benjamin’s family in Philadelphia. No one in the family knows why or when the portraits broke up, though it was at least 75 years ago.
Gratz Roberts said her relatives had long believed theirs was a reproduction and the Sully original was somewhere in Philadelphia.
“I did take it to an antique dealer to get it cleaned once and he said, ‘Are you sure it’s a copy?’” she said with a laugh. “I told him it was, and he said then it was a very good copy. To me, it was a lovely portrait and I enjoyed it.”
Guston flew to Atlanta to examine the work and informed its owner that yes, the gold-framed painting of the smiling brunette in her parlor was indeed the real deal.
“It was exciting,” Guston said. “We weren’t very optimistic that (the blog post) would lead us anywhere but it did, and so quickly.”
After talking it over with her family, Gratz Roberts decided that her great-great-great grandparents’ portraits should be reunited and she donated the cherished heirloom.
Just before Valentine’s Day, the picture of Maria was hung with the rest of the Gratz family, next to her dashing husband, in a room at the Rosenbach’s 19th century mansion-turned-museum. Husband and wife appear to be gazing affectionately at each other, as was probably Sully’s intent when he painted the two portraits, Guston said.
“When you have a portrait like that you have to share it. I can’t see keeping it in my house,” said Gratz Roberts. “Giving it to the Rosenbach seemed like a perfect thing to do.”
She also donated another pastel drawing of Maria Gratz and a chair owned by Benjamin Gratz.
Gratz Roberts is looking forward to visiting Philadelphia this spring, when she will see the pieces in their new home along with other artifacts from her ancestors. The museum’s founders, book dealers and brothers A.S.W. and Philip Rosenbach, had family ties to the Gratzes, so materials from both groups are on display and for research.
“I’m very excited to see it there,” Gratz Roberts said. “Little did I know, just by looking up some information, this would happen. It’s amazing what coincidences we have in life.”
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Online:
http://www.rosenbach.org
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Ms. Pac-man arcade game from the early ’80s. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Premiere Props.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – They’ve come a long way since the man who would be Mario set off to rescue Pauline from Donkey Kong and Pac-Man gobbled up as many dots as he could before the ghosts caught up with him.
But really, are video games art?
Absolutely, contends a major exhibition that opened Friday at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington that celebrates gaming’s rich creative side and the people behind a medium that’s still in full bloom.
“The Art of Video Games” spans the 40 years since video games moved from amusement arcades into homes around the world, evolving in leaps and bounds with ever-more-sophisticated graphics, interactivity and story-telling.
“While this exhibition is not the first exhibition that actually uses video games, it is the first I believe that actually looks at video games themselvesas an art form,” curator Chris Melissinos told AFP.
“This is not about the art within video games,” said Melissinos, an avid gamer since he was a 10-year-old in his native New York borough of Queens.
“This is about video games themselves as an artistic medium.”
Bathed in red and blue lighting, and appropriately next to a Nam June Paik video installation, “The Art of Video Games” spotlights 80 hit games created for 20 different gaming systems, from the Atari VCS of the 1970s to today’s PlayStation 3, that Melissinos calls “the touchstones of their generation.”
Five games—”Pac-Man,” “Super Mario Brothers,” “The Secret of Monkey Island,” “Myst” and “Flower”—are booted up with their original joysticks and motion controllers for visitors to play on wall-size screens.
Long-obsolete consoles like the ColecoVision that powered “Donkey Kong” and the Commodore 64 that made “Attack of the Mutant Camels” possible are encased in Plexiglass display boxes like pharaonic Egyptian artifacts.
“When hardcore gamers come in here, they’re going to go, ‘Yes, these are the correct games to represent these different eras,'” said Chris Kohler, gaming editor of Wired.com and an advisor to the exhibition.
“But when nongamers come in, I think they’re really going to get an education into the art form that this medium really truly is, and has become, and how it has evolved,” he told AFP.
In-gallery videos tackle the past, present and future of gaming through interviews with 20 influential figures in the gaming world; the videos also feature on the exhibition’s website (www.americanart.ci.edu).
Notable among the innovators is Jenova Chan, who tells how rural California inspired him to create “Flower,” in which the player swooshes through Van Gogh-like fields like the wind, picking up flower petals along the way.
“I grew up in Shanghai… I had never seen a rolling hill,” says Chan in the his video interview.
“So when I came to California, I saw these farms, endless green, the windmills. I wanted to capture that because it’s so overwhelming. It’s like a person that has never seen the ocean going to the beach for the first time.”
“Games just aren’t about blowing things up,” says another interviewee, game developer Jennifer MacLean, who personifies the little-known fact that a majority of the people who create online games today are women over 35.
“I’d love to see them enrich somebody’s life by helping them learn to feel more, lean to love more, learn to invest more in the world around them.”
A richly illustrated 216-page catalog rounds out the exhibition that opens alongside GameFest!, a weekend of talks, open game playing and game-inspired music, and runs until Sept. 30 before touring 10 other U.S. cities.
The earthquake that jarred the East Coast in August damaged pinnacles and other stonework on the Washington National Cathedral. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
WASHINGTON (AP) – It’s where the U.S. capital gathers to mourn, to pray and to seek comfort during tragedies. Now the Washington National Cathedral needs help weathering its own financial emergency.
The church has long been a spiritual center, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors and worshippers each year. It’s the burial site of President Woodrow Wilson and Helen Keller. It’s hosted funeral services for Ronald Reagan and other presidents. And during ordeals such as the Sept. 11 attacks, it’s been a place for interfaith reflection.
But the Episcopal cathedral is facing one of the worst financial binds of its 105-year-old history. An 5.8-magnitude earthquake in August severely damaged its intricate stonework and architecture, with repair costs estimated at $20 million. The structure also faces $30 million in preexisting preservation needs.
Even before the earthquake, a financial crisis forced the cathedral to slash its operating budget from $27 million to as little as $13 million. The church relies heavily on donations.
Still, cathedral officials say the financial problems won’t close the church.
“It may take five years. It may take 10 years. It might take 20 years. But we will do this, with God’s help,” Andrew Hullinger, senior director of finance and administration, said of the work needed.
Cathedral officials say they are partnering with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is designating the cathedral a “national treasure” that is critically threatened.
“So many people see the cathedral as the landmark in Washington that it is in the nation’s daily life, but they don’t often think about what it takes to preserve a place like that,” said David Brown, the trust’s executive vice president.
After the earthquake, pinnacles and hand-carved stonework cracked and crashed onto the roof. Much of the damage occurred on older parts of the gothic church that was built in sections over 83 years, beginning in 1907.
Safety nets still stretch overhead even as services have resumed.
The cathedral, first envisioned by President George Washington and architect Pierre L’Enfant, was built on one of the city’s highest points. The resident head stonemason, Joseph Alonso, has called it “one big piece of sculpture” because of its hand-carved architectural details.
Uniquely American touches include a moon rock showcased in a stain glass window and a sculpture of Darth Vader, designed by a child.
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AP-WF-03-14-12 2019GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The earthquake that jarred the East Coast in August damaged pinnacles and other stonework on the Washington National Cathedral. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
A poster depicting David Hockney’s ‘A Bigger Splash,’ a work included in the Berlin exhibition. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Universal Live.
BERLIN (AP) – A primer on three decades of post-World War II art from Los Angeles, including iconic images from Ed Ruscha and David Hockney, abstract works by Sam Francis and conceptual pieces from the 1960s and 1970s, is going on show in Berlin.
The show, “Pacific Standard Time: Art in Los Angeles 1950-1980,” is one result of a mammoth project organized by the Getty Research Institute and the Getty Foundation. It stems from a decade of research into southern California’s diverse art scene.
“There’ll be many names of people, artists you have come to know and associate with Los Angeles, whether it’s Ed Ruscha or Larry Bell or John Baldessari,” one of the curators, Rani Singh, said as the show was presented Wednesday.
“But there’s also many, many other names and unknown names and people you might not have heard of,” she said. “That idea of bringing all of these artists together was at the core of the research we’ve been doing.”
Dozens of exhibitions under the Pacific Standard Time banner opened in Southern California last year, but Berlin organizers say the show at the German capital’s Martin-Gropius-Bau is the only one in Europe.
Peter-Klaus Schuster, a former director of Berlin’s city museums who helped secure the exhibition, said Tokyo and London had been possible alternatives but Berlin made sense in part because Germany took notice of Los Angeles’ art scene early on, in the 1970s.
“What you see here is the temporary national gallery of Southern California art,” he said.
The exhibition offers more than 70 works by some 50 artists, as well as a section offering context on how the art scene in Los Angeles developed and a collection of Julius Shulman’s famed photos of Modernist buildings.
Visitors are greeted by Dennis Hopper photos of fellow celebrities including Jane Fonda and Tina Turner, then by bold pop works such as Hockney’s A Bigger Splash and Ruscha’s Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas. They rub shoulders with less familiar works including the colorful dodecagons of Ronald Davis.
That’s followed by a selection of distinctively Californian abstract hard-edge paintings and ceramic sculptures, including John Mason’s imposing Orange Cross.
Curators also explore the rise of assemblage sculptures and collage, with works from Ed Kienholz and Noah Purifoy among others; and later pieces exploring perceptions of art and artistic processes, including De Wain Valentine’s polyester-resin Red Concave Circle.
A “Berlin room” shows off works made for or in the city: Francis’ huge abstract expressionist painting Berlin Red, commissioned for the city’s Neue Nationalgalerie in 1969; and Kienholz’ Volksempfaengers, made up of radios and other objects from Berlin junk shops and flea markets.
The project aims in part to illustrate the importance to contemporary art of Los Angeles, which has sometimes felt overshadowed by New York.
“We didn’t want to compete with New York,” said Thomas W. Gaehtgens, the Getty Research Institute’s director. “But we wanted to show that LA is there as well.”
The exhibition opened to the public on Thursday and runs until June 10.
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Online:
Exhibition site: http://tinyurl.com/7cnrnd9
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, new home to Michael Heizer’s ‘Levitated Mass.’ Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, from the Carol M. Highsmith Archive at the Library of Congress.
LOS ANGELES (AP) – One big rock in Southern California has been on quite a roll.
The 340-ton boulder that has been lumbering across the southern part of the Golden State for a week and a half arrived at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art before dawn Saturday, cheered on by what became an audience of tens of thousands. There it becomes the centerpiece of acclaimed earth artist Michael Heizer’s latest creation, “Levitated Mass.”
The big rock, accompanied by an entourage of about 100 people, left a dusty quarry in Riverside on Feb. 28, chauffeured toward its destination by a specially built carrier as long as a football field.
As it made a long, circuitous journey toward the museum that was aimed at avoiding narrow streets, low-slung bridges and pesky utility lines, it gained a following of rock star proportions.
At one stop a man proposed to his girlfriend in front of the rock. Later, when it arrived in Long Beach, that city threw a block party that attracted thousands of revelers.
There were a couple of small bumps along the way, however.
Because of its size, the rock could only be moved late at night and in the early morning, stopping each day at pre-arranged locations.
Two days into its journey it had to pull up two miles short of its destination when a transmission in the engine of the vehicle pulling it became balky. It was parked partially in the roadway of a highway just down the street from a freeway entrance in Diamond Bar, giving passing motorists an exceptionally good view of it.
It got back on schedule the following day, but as it navigated its way through South Los Angeles earlier this week, movers discovered two unaccounted for palm trees blocking its path. They cut them down and proceeded on, promising the community they would eventually return to replace them.
At the museum, the rock is to be placed over a 465-foot-long trench, where Heizer has promised that visitors who walk underneath will experience the illusion that it is floating above them.
The artist, noted for mammoth-scale works in which the earth itself becomes his palette, is perhaps best known for “City,” a Mount Rushmore-sized creation he has been building near his home in the Nevada desert for decades. He has kept most people from seeing it, but photos that have surfaced show a number of huge, pyramid-like buildings, some as high as 80 feet, stretching across more than a mile of desert terrain.
He came up with the idea for “Levitated Mass” more than 40 years ago, then spent decades searching for the right rock to pull it together.
He finally found one six years ago in the two-story high, 340-ton megalith he located in Riverside, 60 miles from the museum.
Because of the rock’s size it took museum officials months just to work out an acceptable route to take it on. They finally settled on a roundabout journey that carried it through 22 Southern California cities.
The project, anticipated to cost as much as $10 million, is being funded by well-heeled museum donors.
With the rock finally in place, museum officials hope it will be ready to be unveiled sometime this summer.
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Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, new home to Michael Heizer’s ‘Levitated Mass.’ Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, from the Carol M. Highsmith Archive at the Library of Congress.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) – A Kansas commission is looking for artists interested in painting a mural at the Statehouse commemorating the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring segregated schools unconstitutional.
The Capitol Preservation Committee is asking artists to submit applications to be declared qualified to execute the project, which is to be completed in 2014. House member Valdenia Winn, a Kansas City Democrat who chairs the Preservation Committee, says applications will be taken until May 1.
The mural will honor the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling, which declared that separate schools for black and white children where inherently unequal. The high court consolidated a lawsuit challenging segregation in Topeka’s public schools with cases from Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
