Long Beach Lost: The 16-foot baby sculpture that terrorized prudish Alamitos Beach residents

My ongoing series, Long Beach Lost, was launched to examine buildings, spaces, and cultural happenings that have largely been erased, including the forgotten tales attached to existing places and things. This is not a preservationist series but a historical one that will help keep a record of our architectural, cultural, and spatial history.

Editor’s note: This series first appeared on Longbeachize in 2017 and 2018; some articles have been republished, updated, and/or altered.

“I absolutely loved it—but the neighbors? Not so much.”

These are the words of Long Beach Museum of Art Executive Director Ron Nelson when reflecting back on the massive, 16-foot, saturated-ROYGBIV-yellow baby sculpture from Matt Wedel that was installed into the museum on Oct. 25, 2007. Weighing some 2150 pounds, the work required assembly in pieces. Cranes. And the dedicated work of then-CSULB MFA graduate Matt Wedel.

Meant to be a permanent part of the museum, it wouldn’t even live to see the day of the age of one year. Its moment at the LBMA? Ten months.

Residential response to the Long Beach baby sculpture—or “child,” given its title?—led to its abortion.

Margaret Foss, who lived across the street from the museum at tnhe time, thought the piece was “going to be up for a very limited amount of time”: and was happy to see the structure being removed. “I’ve been teased to death at work about it,” she told reporters at the time when having “Child” in view from her house.

“It wasn’t a very pretty piece of art […] but I think it’s part of living down here—along with the traffic and the parking—you just kind of have to go with the flow.”

Well, clearly the neighborhood didn’t go with the flow: Initially set to be removed in March of the following year it was installed, scheduling conflicts pushed it to August of 2008, just two months shy of its first birthday.

The terrorist of a Long Beach baby sculpture? It was permanently replaced.

And it was replaced by Norman Hines’s 1980 untitled work. Carved from a singular solid block of marble, the curvature of the piece evokes “a whale or contour of a natural landscape… [Hines’s eye for form, and form in response to different material.”

For Nelson, whose tenure began just two years before he installed the wrongfully maligned sculpture in 2006, his role was to move the Long Beach Museum of Art into the future. When it was discovered that a 51-inch-long, 47-inch-tall orange dairy cow sold sculpted by Wedel sold in September of 2007 for $6,100 last September.

This is what inspired him to work with Wedel on a larger scale. Since? LBMA has undergone a significant transformation, evolving from a traditional art institution into a dynamic, cultural hub that embraces contemporary themes and community engagement.

How Matt Wedel’s “Child” helped propel Long Beach Museum of Art into the future.

In 2013, LBMA hosted the innovative “Architecture for Dogs” exhibition, curated by Kenya Hara. This unique showcase featured 13 architects and designers reimagining the doghouse, creating structures that catered to the comfort and aesthetics of both dogs and their owners. The exhibition not only highlighted the intersection of design and functionality but also invited visitors to reconsider the spaces shared with their canine companions.

Building on this momentum, LBMA launched the “Vitality and Verve” series in 2015, starting with “Transforming the Urban Landscape.” This groundbreaking exhibition invited urban contemporary artists to create site-specific murals and installations directly onto the museum’s walls, blurring the lines between street art and institutional curation. The success of this series led to subsequent iterations, including “In the Third Dimension,” which expanded the concept into immersive, three-dimensional installations. \

The museum’s commitment to showcasing diverse voices continued with exhibitions like Tidawhitney Lek’s “Living Spaces” in 2023. Lek, a Cambodian-American artist, explored themes of identity, memory, and domestic life, offering a poignant reflection on the immigrant experience in SoCal.

LBMA’s evolution reflects a broader shift towards inclusivity and contemporary relevance, positioning the museum as a vital space for dialogue, creativity, and community connection in Long Beach.

Matt Wedel has gone on to be one of the contemporary world’s most influential and respected sculptors.

It’s almost as if the controversy helped Wedel’s art. Just one year after the debacle, he began a deep relationship with the still-functioning, happily-celebrating-50-years-in-the-region LA Louver gallery in Venice, garnering his first mention in the Los Angeles Times. The very same writer who briefly mentions him in that group exhibit gives Wedel a full review of his future solo show at the same gallery. Two years later, the most influential art and architecture critic at the Times, Christopher Knight, reviews http://yet another solo show at LA Louver—to much praise from Knight. Then, come 2018, the very author that first published him in the Times—David Pagel, still active at the Times—would do yet another review of another solo show at the same gallery.

Since then, he has outright blown up. And the immediacy to have the piece removed at the call of neighbors reflects, though not entirely, another instance when the museum felt the need to, well, let go of things. In 2003, it pawned off one of the most prized video art collections to the Getty at the call of the need for money.