How Do You Move a 340-Ton Artwork? Very Carefully

[Gerald]

A granite boulder at the Stone Valley Quarry will be transported to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art 60 miles away over the course of nine nights, traveling through the crowded metropolis at six miles an hour.http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/201...slideshow.html

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — It is just under 60 miles from the Stone Valley Quarry here — an expanse of dust, boulders, roaring bulldozers and cut granite hillsides — to the lush campus of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Museum Mile. Behind a pile of rocks the other afternoon, out of sight from the road, workers scurried around a 340-ton, 21-foot-high solid granite boulder, trussed with red steel girders, gleaming under the desert sun. If all goes well, this boulder will be hovering over a cut in the earth on the grounds of the museum, and be open for viewing, by the end of November. The piece, known as “Levitated Mass,” by Michael Heizer, a California-born sculptor known for huge outdoor installations that make extensive use of earth and rock, is by any measure an ambitious and brash use of outdoor space. But more ambitious might be the logistics of moving Mr. Heizer’s rock, which was dynamited out of a hillside, from here to there. It is a trip that will take the boulder through the heart of one of the most congested urban centers in the country: nine nights at six miles an hour, through 120 miles of roads, highways, bridges, overpasses, overhead wires, alarmingly low-hanging traffic lights and sharp turns.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/ar...me&ref=general

Note: October 7, 2011