Erika Rothenberg

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Erika Rothenberg
Road to Hollywood
2001

Project Area: Hollywood
Project: Hollywood & Highland Center
Project Location: 6801 Hollywood Boulevard
Project Type: Developer Initiated

Description:

Road to Hollywood is a sinuous marble mosaic and concrete floor piece that weaves its way through the Grand Staircase and snakes hundreds of feet across Babylon Court, and can also be found on the floor above. The artwork contains 49 stories of how people in the entertainment business came to Hollywood and began their careers. The stories were gathered through interviews, books, articles, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Library collection of oral histories. People's occupations, rather than names, are identified, and the stories range from the humorous to the poignant. The path ends at an oversized chaise lounge made of glass-reinforced concrete over a steel frame that looks over Highland Avenue.

Artist Profile

Artist Erika Rothenberg studied at the University of Chicago and began her career in public art with a 1984 commission from New York’s Creative Time for the Freedom of Expression National Monument, a collaborative sculpture created with architect Laurie Hawkinson and performance artist John Malpede. Since then, Rothenberg has completed commissions for Los Angeles and San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Hartford, and Philadelphia. Rothenberg usually researches a location through interviews, history books, and articles to create a site-specific public artwork that will engage the viewer in a new unspoken dialogue. The artist’s works are in the public collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Milwaukee Art Museum; Toledo Museum of Art; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Van Abbemuseum, Ghent; and the Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lausanne. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles.