Michael Heizer

L.A. Film Festival 2013: Documentaries About the City, From Rappers to the LACMA Rock

L.A. County Hospital, casting directors and Richard Nixon also feature in a fest brimming with nonfiction SoCal films

Rita Gonzalez: LACMA Curator and Defender of Subtlety

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here. Five months after a 340-ton rock officially became part of Michael Heizer's massive Levitated Mass sculpture on the grounds of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, curator Rita ... More >>

10 Most Memorable L.A. Art Events of 2012

This year felt like a year of growing pains for art in Los Angeles. Maybe that's because 2012 started as Pacific Standard Time -- that regionwide, Getty-funded series of exhibitions on SoCal art history -- wound down and the art community shifted attention from past to present. Maybe it's because th ... More >>

Last Chance to See 'Ends of the Earth,' MOCA's Landmark Land Art Show

"Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974," a historical re-examination of the land art movement that closes Sunday, comes at a perfect time. It provides some thoughtful background information as we indulge in the large-scale public spectacle that is the unveiling of Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass at LA ... More >>

American Idol Meets the Museum

The Hammer's Mohn Award is a grand experiment in art-world democracy

Michael Heizer's Double Negative: A Journey to a Land Art Landmark

How I learned to stop worrying and love man-made gashes in the earth

Michael Heizer's 'Actual Size' Exhibit at LACMA Shows His Complicated Relationship With Photographs

Before you enter the third floor gallery of LACMA's Broad Contemporary, the attendant will say, "No pictures please." In most other galleries, flash-less photography is fine. But this gallery holds work by Michael Heizer, the artist behind the 340-ton rock on the museum's back lot, plus Double Negat ... More >>

20 Ways to Pose for Photos at the LACMA Rock

By Eve Weston and Zachary Pincus-Roth At the recent opening of Levitated Mass, better known as the "LACMA Rock," the sculpture was heralded as a new landmark for Los Angeles -- like the Washington Monument in D.C. or the ancient obelisks in Egypt. Such landmarks are feats of human engineering and ... More >>

LACMA Rock Finally Opens to the Public. But Does It Live Up to Expectations?

"When the rock is installed, will I stand under it and experience its massive weight?" wondered artist Dai Toyofuku, when I spoke with him him back in March. "Will I feel like it might crush me?" The 340-ton granite boulder, soon to be the centerpiece of Michael Heizer's sculpture Levitated Mass, ha ... More >>

Five Artsy Things to Do This Week, Including the LACMA Rock's Debut

This week, a temporary exhibition takes over Mount Wilson Observatory, an artist reflects on Hurricane Katrina and LACMA's Levitated Mass finally opens to the public. 5. The artist and the hurricane "It is important you trust me enough to follow my thoughts but mistrust me enough to question them," ... More >>

What Land Art Would You Create If Money Were No Object? Three Artists' Proposals

In 1966, Robert Smithson, famous for piling up mud and black basalt in Utah's Great Salt Lake and sculpting it into a 1,500-foot coil called Spiral Jetty, went rock hunting with sculptor Donald Judd. They went in New Jersey, where Smithson was from, and spent an hour chopping away at a lump of lava ... More >>

LACMA Rock: Will We Ever Get Past Its Journey and Focus on the Finished Sculpture?

Mono-ha, the Japanese "School of Things," at Blum & Poe

LACMA Rock Parties at 'Rockapalooza' in Bixby Knolls, With Pet Rocks, Arby's and The Flintstones

"You remember the Emperor's New Clothes?" asked B.T. Tuggle, secretary of the Bixby Knolls Kiwanis Club. He set up a table Wednesday on Atlantic Avenue for Rockapalooza, the party Long Beach neighborhood Bixby Knolls threw during the LACMA rock's daylong stay on its main drag. The 340-ton granite bo ... More >>

Five Artsy Things to Do This Week, Including the LACMA Rock and Martha Stewart Meeting a Hoarder

This week's list includes a tribute, disguise, displacement, hoarder and megalith. It runs the gamut, in other words. 5. Banana face Urs Fischer likes obstructions and disguises. Better yet are obstructions that double as disguises. For his exhibition at Gagosian in Beverly Hills, he's blown up vin ... More >>

Rock-y Road: Street Closures for LACMA's Levitated Mass

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation announced Monday it will be implementing rolling (get it?) street closures to accommodate LACMA's Levitated Mass as it crawls through the the busiest corridor of its route at speeds of 5 to 8 miles per hour. The 340-ton rock is about halfway through an ... More >>

LACMA Rock, Michael Heizer's 340-Ton Sculpture, Begins its Journey to L.A.

"God made the rock. Man made all this equipment," said a Riverside resident who'd driven to Jurupa Valley, a few miles east of home last night. He and over a hundred others gathered to see a 340-ton granite rock, soon to be part of Levitated Mass, artist Michael Heizer's massive outdoor sculpture at ... More >>

We're Going to Have to Hear About the LACMA Rock for Another 2 Weeks

It's only Day Two in the $10 million cross-county journey of the LACMA rock, and already we never want to hear the words "LACMA rock" ever again. What makes this particular boulder so special is that artist Michael Heizer chose it as the 340-ton centerpiece of his long-time-coming LACMA exhibit, "L ... More >>

LACMA Is Having Boulder Problems

The New York Times finally made a correct assumption about Los Angeles today, in the scathing "340-Ton Sculpture Versus Immovable Bureaucracy." Writer Adam NaGourney blames the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's delay in moving the centerpiece of a new installation from Riverside to its West L.A. c ... More >>

Against the Rock-Hard Matzoh Ball

Guzzle & NoshMatzoh ball soup at Mezze.​It's almost impossible to find a decent matzoh ball at a restaurant in Los Angeles. Even at the finest delis, the standard matzoh ball is as large as a softball and nearly as hard. Perhaps this could be justified by some complex sociocultural explanation ... More >>

Natural History: Anthony Lepore and Mark Hagen

Andrew Rogers, Land Artist: Now Playing on a Continent Near You

Andrew Rogers: Ancient Language, Atacama Desert 80m x 3m​ Australian artist Andrew Rogers has spent the last 13 years bouncing between 13 countries on all seven continents, working with over 6,700 people in all, creating sculptures in deserts, glaciers, gorges, city centers, national parks an ... More >>

The Encyclopedic City

Michael Govan wants to change the face of L.A. What are you going to do to help him?

The Ace is Wild

The Doug Chrismas story

Double Helix

Over the river and through the woods . . .

The Big Nowhere

Out on the Nellis Range with the Center for Land Use Interpretation

Show and Tell

L.A.'s museum curators on their favorite works of art

Cabin Fever

Photographer Richard Barnes shoots the Unabomber's shack