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Maurizio Cattelan’s dizzying Guggenheim retrospective may have ended, but people are still talking about it. What I’d like to know? How did they do it? This isn’t baby’s first mobile we’re talking about. This is whole skeletons, human figures and a host of taxidermied animals. To pull it off, the Guggenheim’s in-house installation team consulted with structural engineers who made mockups and 3D models and ran several tests before going to work with Cattelan’s pieces (bummer alert: they weren’t the real things but “representations of his work”).
To make sure the 11-ton exhibit wouldn’t cave the roof in, structural engineering firm Gilsanz Murray Steficek rigged up 12 cables that connected the columns to the roof’s center with a ring truss. The individual cables used to hang each piece were then attached to the central truss. After that, a load monitoring system was installed to prevent adding too much weight in one particular area. The entire operation relied on a synchronized motor system that could raise or lower the entire installation, even redistribute the weight around should it get too heavy in one area.
Before the exhibition was mounted on the main floor it was staged in a 1/12th scale model, the timing and position of each piece of Cattelan’s work perfected until the installation could be raised in its entirety without any cables interfering or uneven weight distribution. Watch the installation video. [ more images of installation ]
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