The Getty Museum is apologizing after the long-awaited kickoff of a new art event last Sunday turned out to be a little too explosive for the neighborhood’s liking.
The series of explosions sent shockwaves through the surrounding area, including the USC campus, shaking those present more than they had ever imagined.
Videos from both inside and outside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum show plumes of smoke after the fireworks went off Sunday afternoon, but moments before that, the sky filled with a vibrant display of color — all part of the PST Art: Art & Science Collide exhibit that officially kicked off with the ceremony.
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Despite the brief tremors, the explosions were so intense that some people in the arena dropped their phones to record the show, covering their ears.
For those who didn’t know the show was even happening, it was the suddenness of the event that made them most tense, especially with such threatening clouds hanging over the stadium.
“It looks like they blew up the Coliseum,” said Khalil Mayden, a USC student who documented the show’s aftermath. “I immediately checked with my friends and stuff.”
Other students were afraid they would have to drop everything because something bad might have happened on campus.
“I kept hearing it and I was like, ‘Okay, wait, do I have to go somewhere? Do I have to evacuate?’” said Gaelle Jean-Pierre.
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Even to people who don’t live on campus, it sounded like a bomb exploding.
“It felt huge and it was so scary,” said Astrid Kayembe, who lives near the USC campus. “I immediately looked out my window and saw all my neighbors from my complex, my neighbor’s apartment complex, and even the complex after that, and we were all standing outside thinking, ‘What is going on?’”
While the Getty billed the event as a celebration, officially kicking off its months-long exhibition of art and science, most found the show far too loud. They were shocked by the work of renowned artist Cai Guo-Qiang, whose trademark is “daytime fireworks.” They are made with biodegradable and organic pigments mixed with the medium: gunpowder.
The noise, the abruptness of the explosion itself, and the repetition of the spectacle led people to believe that gunshots were being fired, especially in the finale, which some found to be toneless.
“The times we live in, just look at what just happened in Lebanon,” said Carol Cheh, an arts journalist. “Here we are creating huge explosions with a lot of smoke and no explanation in a big city.”
PST Art issued a press release prior to the event with the official title “WE ARE: Explosion Event for PST ART.”
“Starts at sunset, WE ARE is a monumental, multi-act performance featuring the artist’s signature daytime fireworks display, including ten thousand sparkling mini-fireworks installed throughout the Coliseum’s seating area and more than a thousand choreographed aerial drones carrying pyrotechnics. The work will mark the first event of its kind in U.S. history,” according to a PST Art press release, which noted that the show was created in collaboration with a custom artificial intelligence model.
“The performance evokes the myth of Prometheus’ theft of fire from the gods and suggests a contemporary parallel in the relationship between humanity and AI.”
Shana Nys Dambrot, an art critic who attended the event, says there is no doubt that the exhibition achieved its goal: to stimulate and provoke. However, she is not sure whether it went too far.
“It felt like a barrage, and that would have been okay, but then they started raining fireworks down on the crowd and people were getting hit in the head with little cardboard tubes and little bits of, like, nuclear fallout were all over everybody’s hair and clothes,” she said. “And that, I don’t know, the combination of it all, I could feel my fight-or-flight instinct kicking in.”
Following the public outcry, The Getty issued a statement, saying in part: “We are aware and deeply regret that some neighbors and attendees were affected by the noise and smoke that marked this opening event. The Coliseum followed its normal procedure for events held at the stadium and informed municipal partners.”
