Patte Loper made this painting, called Film Still Circa 1977. An exhibition of her new works is happening Thursday during Pioneer Square Art Walk, at Platform Gallery. None of her works will weigh 30, 50, or 340 tons.
  • Courtesy the artist
  • Patte Loper made this painting, called Film Still Circa 1977. An exhibition of her new works is happening Thursday during Pioneer Square Art Walk, at Platform Gallery. None of her works will weigh 30, 50, or 340 tons.
It's happening now—maybe you'll see the juggernaut out there on the road this week, snaking from Riverside, California, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

A custom vehicle three freeway lanes wide has been commissioned by LACMA in conjunction with a company that normally transports nuclear generators and missiles ("extreme objects"). But this extreme object is a 340-ton boulder that's part of a new sculpture by Michael Heizer, the cowboy/land artist whose earliest urban installation was here in Seattle.

That piece, made in 1976, also included big rocks: three granite slabs 30 to 50 tons each (give or take 20 tons, you know), carted by train and barge from the Cascades to Myrtle Edwards Park, where they sit to this day.

But that piece didn't seem to have quite so much to, ah, prove. LACMA director Michael Govan is calling this new Heizer one of the heaviest objects ever moved, raising the spectre of ancient monoliths.

Utility lines, street lights, and stop lights are being dismantled—then remounted immediately—to make room. Permits have been required from every municipality and county along the way, as well as the state of California.

It just goes to show: Museums and wealthy donors don't love challenges, unless those challenges are logistical.

And then they love them so much it's pornographic.

Almost like they're, you know, compensating for something?