The way the installation became a Los Angeles symbol

The main entrance to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was through a hole in the postmodern fortress of the Art of the Americas Building on Wilshire Boulevard from the mid-eighties through the late aughts. The campus from Sixth Street to Wilshire Boulevard in 2008, the museum opened a drastically reconfigured campus, designed by architect Renzo Piano, that shifted the center of gravity west to a new pavilion and walkway spanning. To its western, a three-story red escalator rose into the top flooring and primary entry for the brand new wide Contemporary Art Museum; into the eastern, a brand new staircase created to display Tony Smith’s sky-scraping “Smoke” sculpture led up toward the old campus.

The pavilion was supposed to be anchored with a replica steam locomotive hanging from a 160-foot crane and belching smoke, a still-to-this-day-theoretical work by Jeff Koons in the middle. Weiterlesen