The fireworks display by internationally acclaimed artist Cai Guo-Qiang on 15 September at the Los Angeles Coliseum was supposed to be a dramatic kick-off for PST Art: Art and Science Collide, the Getty’s $20m exhibition extravaganza. Instead, the event took a dangerous turn with actual collisions, as debris from the fireworks struck several guests—a few of whom needed first-aid treatment.
Getty spokesperson Alexandria Sivak declined to specify how many attendees were harmed or in what ways, but she sent a statement acknowledging multiple injuries.
“Unfortunately, pieces of debris fell on some people. We know a few of them required first aid,” Sivak wrote in an email. “Of course this is distressing to us, and we have expressed our concern to the people for whom we have contact information.”
The world’s wealthiest arts organisation, the Getty commissioned the public fireworks event from Cai, entitled WE ARE, for an undisclosed sum. Overall, it has spent around $20m on this edition of PST Art, mainly in the form of grants to dozens of Southern California museums and organisations to stage their own shows within the art-and-science rubric.
Several of those local museums’ directors and curators were in the Coliseum crowd on Sunday evening to see WE ARE. Around 4,500 guests stood on the stadium’s playing field, watching as firework shells perched on bamboo sticks exploded above the seats and colourful pigment-based pyrotechnics, carried by drones, dazzled overhead. Famous for designing the pyrotechnics for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Cai spoke from a podium on the sidelines narrating the event with the help of an artificial intelligence-assisted Chinese-to-English translator.
The sky above the Los Angeles Coliseum lit up during the finale of Cai Guo-Qiang’s WE ARE Photo by Jori Finkel
The show culminated with an act titled “Divine Wrath”, featuring a thunderous string of explosions overhead that filled the field with smoke and fumes. It was during this time that witnesses saw what they describe as rocks or pellets falling from the sky.
One guest standing near the western goal post says he was covering his ears with his hands because of the noise, when his left hand was hit by some debris. “I had this moment of panic because it hurt, and I was expecting more of these rocks to be raining down,” says this spectator, Adam, who asked to be identified by first name only. “It triggered my anxiety, thinking something really went wrong.”
“If I didn’t have my hands up, it could have hit my face.” Worst case scenario, he says, “I could have been blinded.” He adds that when he was leaving the stadium area, he saw a woman with what appeared to be a split lip who was crying and being attended to by a medic.
At this time, he says his hand feels fine. As for the nature of the “rock”, which he brought home with him, he said he couldn’t tell exactly what it is composed of. “I don’t know if it’s a piece of the explosive or maybe a cap, because it’s cylindrical.”
Sivak at the Getty confirmed that some of the debris “included pieces of clay caps” but did not address specific questions about whether or how the fireworks malfunctioned.
Cai had not yet responded to questions emailed to his studio as of press time.
