The LACMA rock: The overnight run to Long Beach

The 340-ton boulder winding its way through the Southland to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will be hitting the streets of Long Beach Tuesday night, and folks there are ready to party.

Local business leaders are throwing a bash in Bixby Knolls to welcome the monolith, the centerpiece of "Levitated Mass," a work by artist Michael Heizer that will be installed on the grounds of the county museum near its Resnick Pavilion.

"We’ve had crowds at every stop, and a lot of people have been following it the whole way," said LACMA spokeswoman Miranda Carroll.

PHOTOS: Giant rock rolling toward LACMA

The boulder arrived at its latest pit stop, along Palo Verde Avenue in Lakewood, early Tuesday morning and heads to Long Beach starting around 10 p.m. The rock, cradled in a mammoth trailer of heavy-duty steel girders, will spend Wednesday on Atlantic Avenue, between 36th Street and 37th Street.

The boulder’s 105-mile journey to LACMA began last week in Riverside, where the giant chunk of granite was blasted out of the earth at a quarry in the Jurupa Mountains. The rock is scheduled to arrive at the museum on Saturday.

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-- Phil Willon

Photo: The rock back at the quarry, being prepared for the trip. Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times.

LACMA's big rock will finally roll Tuesday

It’s official: After nearly half a year of delays, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s 340-ton monolith, sitting in a Riverside County quarry, will finally begin its journey to the museum on Tuesday night.

The rock will hit the road on its custom-built transporter between 10 and 11p.m. and travel at the painstakingly slow speed of about 5 miles per hour. It’s due to arrive at LACMA in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday, March 10.

From there -- likely the following Monday, the museum says -- the boulder will be loaded into its final resting place outside the Resnick Pavilion, where it will form the center of artist Michael Heizer’s enormous sculpture, “Levitated Mass.”  

The rock will travel through four counties and 22 cities, so it's no surprise that the numerous delays have been mostly due to permit issues -- not to mention the mind-boggling logistics of moving a two-story-high chunk of granite, weighing 680,000 pounds, through congested urban areas. 

Which is partly why, on Tuesday night, quarry owner Stephen Vanderhart will throw a reception for approximately 300 people to see the rock off, complete with a BBQ truck and a DJ.

Culture Monster will be there, of course, with updates throughout the evening. And, hey, we may even score one of Vanderhart’s custom T-shirts bearing the sentiment “Big. Rock. Roll.”

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--Deborah Vankin

Twitter.com/@debvankin

Photo: LACMA's rock. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times  

Michael Heizer's 'Levitated Mass' will soon journey to LACMA

Things are getting ready to roll, quite literally, for LACMA's "Levitated Mass."

On Thursday the museum led a hard-hat press tour to Stone Valley Quarry in Riverside to meet the object of its affection: a 340-ton, 21 1/2-foot-high granite boulder. “The monolith,” as LACMA calls it, will form the centerpiece of the outdoor sculpture-in-progress, “Levitated Mass” by artist Michael Heizer on the LACMA campus.

At Thursday’s quarry visit, Rick Albrecht of Emmert International, the firm that is transporting the boulder, explained that it will travel in a custom-built transporter, at night only, and average seven miles a day. The approximately 85-mile journey, normally a 1 1/2-hour drive, will take a circuitous route lasting a week to 10 days. Altogether, 50 to 60 people –- drivers, utility crews and police escorts among them –- will travel with the rock caravan.

The entire project, including the boulder, construction on the sculpture's site and transport, will cost between $5 million and $10 million, said museum director Michael Govan. It's largely being funded by private donations and through Hanjin Shipping.