Michael Heizer
Levitated Mass
2012
Michael Heizer's 'Levitated Mass' (2012), installed on the campus of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, suspends a 340-tonne granite boulder over a 139-metre trench cut into the plaza; visitors walk the trench and pass beneath the rock, which seems to float weightlessly above their heads. The monolith was quarried east of Los Angeles and transported 170 km over eleven nights in a custom-built rig that drew crowds along its route — itself a kind of public spectacle. The work extends the heritage of 1960s–70s American Land Art into the heart of the urban museum.
Exhibition Venue
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Image source: Wikimedia Commons