LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has spent months — and $5 million to $10 million — trying to get a 340-ton boulder from a dusty quarry in Riverside onto its campus west of downtown.
When the teardrop-shaped chunk of granite finally arrives, it will become the focal point of acclaimed earth artist Michael Heizer’s latest creation, “Levitated Mass.” Museum visitors by the thousands are expected to walk under what will be one of the largest environmental art creations ever placed in an urban setting.
Heizer “came up in a generation that wasn’t just about what you could create or sculpt in the studio,” said Rochelle Steiner, dean of the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Fine Arts. “It was about how you could intervene in the elements, in your own environment, in the landscape, and how the environment became not just your subject matter but your situation as well.”
At the Stone Valley quarry, on the outskirts of Riverside, a 196-wheel, 44-axle transport vehicle strong enough to hold more than a million pounds is being constructed. With drivers, steerers and police escorts, as many as 60 people could be involved in the move.
