Can Street Art Be Moved Without Destroying It?

“Vermonica”—an L.A. fixture for 24 years—was moved without notice, sparking discussions about history, place, and what makes art, art.

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FROM MAY OF 1993 THROUGH late November 2017, if you were looking for the most interesting parking lot median in all of Los Angeles, there was a pretty clear answer. In the lot outside the strip mall at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, lined up on a grassy island, loomed 25 distinct street lights, each sourced from a different part of the city. A crook-necked pole from Benedict Canyon stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a squat obelisk from Bel Air. Baroque lanterns from Olympic Boulevard mirrored dangling globes that once lit Little Tokyo. Some lights dated all the way back to 1925, when the city’s official illuminated-infrastructure department, the Bureau of Street Lighting, was first created. Others were more recent, clones of those that are still visible in their natural habitats.

The lights form an art piece—called Vermonica, after the two streets that cross nearby—created by artist Sheila Klein, with help from the Bureau of Street Lighting and the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Intended as a one-year installation, the piece lasted nearly a quarter of a century, buoyed by the ongoing support of the community, and enjoying a consistent influx of new fans who would stumble upon it on their way to the nearby Staples.

Then, just before Thanksgiving, Vermonica disappeared. The poles showed up soon after, about a block away, in front of the Bureau of Street Lighting’s Field Operations office. The Bureau, it later emerged, had been trying to save them: the shopping center that owns the whole strip mall was renovating the parking lot, and had made clear that they would destroy the piece unless it was removed immediately. The Field Office was nearby, and under the Bureau’s control. The move was an effort to protect the art.

But fans, and Klein herself, don’t necessarily think it succeeded. “This is not my piece,” Klein wrote in a statement soon after the move, “and it is no longer Vermonica.” Some fans of the work agree: “Vermonica has been destroyed,” says Richard Schave of the Los Angeles-based tour company Esotouric, who has been working with Klein to try to find some kind of resolution. Others expressed their displeasure on historic preservation Facebook groups. The Bureau, too, describes the relocation as temporary, and is now in talks with Klein about moving the streetlights again. “The final location of the piece and new name will be resolved by the artist,” the Bureau’s assistant director, Megan Hackney, wrote in an email.

The set of lit-up poles currently standing guard over the Bureau building certainly resembles Vermonica. It’s made of the same streetlights, with the same storied origins, arranged in the same order (although they’re now installed on a slight curve). So what was the magic that made Vermonica what it was? Where did it go, and is it possible to bring it back?

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