“Miss Mao Trying to Poise Herself at the Top of Lenin’s Head,” a.k.a. the giant Lenin-head statue at the former Ace Museum at the corner of 4th and La Brea, has been removed.  As we noted a little more than a week ago, the Gao Brothers, the Chinese artists who made the iconic artwork, had been given 10 days to remove it by the owner of the property, who has evicted the Museum for non-payment of rent.  The artists and Drew Hammond, the Consulting Exhibitions Director for the Ace Gallery (a separate entity from the Ace Museum), had been frantically searching for a new home for the politically-charged piece, since it would have been very hard to return to the Gao Brothers’ native China.
Readers alerted us that the statue was being removed on Wednesday, and we learned yesterday that it has now been fully removed. Â Hammond confirmed that the Gao Brothers did find a way to remove it before the landlord’s deadline (after which it could have been considered abandoned and auctioned off), but said he has not learned yet where the statue will end up.
Good.
Bad.
It’s now in Newberry Springs, CA The tightrope walker is not currently assembled
Yes – here’s what we’ve heard since that first story: https://larchmontbuzz.com/featured-stories-larchmont-village/miss-mao-spotted-mojave-desert/ and https://larchmontbuzz.com/featured-stories-larchmont-village/miss-mao-lenin-head-update-staying-desert-now/