Sony Putting up a 94 ft rainbow over Culver City

Source: Curbed Los Angeles

Somehow a 94 foot tall rainbow seems to have flown under almost everybody's radar for months now (the Culver City Times had The story in may). Sony Pictures has gotten Culver City's approval on a huge rainbow sculpture by artist Tony Tasset (you may know his Paul Bunyan near Chicago) that it plans to put up near the Madison Avenue entrance to its campus. There's no word yet on how West Hollywood feels about this. "Rainbow" will be 94 feet high, 188 feet wide, 8 feet thick, and refer to "the sense of optimism and well-being associated with rainbows in general and more specifically with the rainbow in popular culture as imagined in the iconic Wizard of Oz film, created in the very movie studio that will become home to the Rainbow sculpture," according to materials from the May Cultural Affairs Committee meeting at which the art concept was approved. The piece will be visible 24/7 to both pedestrians and drivers on the north side of the Sony lot, according to the report, but it won't be lit up.

"Rainbow" will be fabricated off-site in seven sections, then assembled by crane at the installation site over six to eight weeks in early 2012 (completion is forecast for the spring). It'll be "created from a welded steel truss and clad with aluminum panels custom finished with a Kynar® paint," according to the CAC report, and while the finish "is extremely durable and colorfast," it will require cleaning every few years.

Sony is building "Rainbow" to fulfill Culver City's Art in Public Places requirement, which mandates that one percent of the budget for certain development projects goes toward public art. The project's total budget is $1,536,516.