$10 Million Dollar Rock

"Rock Star" takes on new meaning for a 340-ton boulder that arrived to cheering crowds this week at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) after a painstainkingly slow eleven day journey from a quarry in Riverside.

Along the approximate 60 mile passage, thousands of people lined the route and visited the pre-arranged stopping points as the rock passed through 22 communities. One man proposed to his girlfriend with the two-story high rock in a massive custom built carrier as a backdrop. Doesn't sound too romantic, but I guess they'll always remember that moment.This isn't the first time a rock garnered widespread attention bordering on hysteria. For about six months in the 70's Pet Rocks became a craze, although Pet Rocks cost about four bucks a piece.

This is certainly not your grandmother's pet rock. The cost of the LACMA rock is expected to exceed $10 million which has many questioning the wisdom of such an expense during economic trying times, indeed questioning whether it's art at all. But not earth artist Michael Heizer, who has been searching for the perfect giant boulder more than 40 years when he originally came up with the idea for a creation called "Levitated Mass."

He found the Riverside rock about six years ago and the logistical nightmare moved forward with the help of private donors who don't mind spending millions on.... huh... a rock. Heizer says the rock will be placed over a trench allowing visitors to walk underneath and experience the illusion that it is floating above them.

This is not Heizer's first large scale work utilizing the earth itself. That's what he does. "I think earth is the material with the most potential because it is the original source material," he says.
He has been working on a major project called "City" in the Nevada desert near his home for decades. It's not finished or open to the public yet but photos show more than a mile of desert landscape draped with pyramid style buildings, modernist "complexes."

The cost of "City" is in the neighborhood of $25 million. Heizer is an artist who doesn't let expensive production costs of his projects get in the way. "As long as you're going to make a sculpture, why not make one that competes with a 747, or the Empire State Building, or the Golden Gate Bridge," he says.

Heizer told Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic for The New York Times, he never finished high school and was a "straight F student." Time will tell what grade "Levitated Mass" deserves. LACMA Director Michael Govan is excited the rock is finally at the museum. "It's great," he says, "a real gift for the public."