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Click the timeline to navigate to different stages of the show's preparations.
Early 2007–early 2008
Cai Studio, the Guggenheim offices and a garage in lower Manhattan
Engineering and endurance testing
Inopportune: Stage One, the neon-lit car-bombing installation that will dominate the museum’s atrium, takes a solid year to engineer. In Munroe’s words, “We had to find a car that was American but light enough that seven of them could hang from the rotunda ceiling." Engineers string the sample models upside down in a garage off-site, with 2,000 pounds of weight in them, then shake them to make sure they won’t drop. Then the museum's planners bring in aerial-cable experts with experience working on skyscrapers and cable bridges—"mountaineer types," Munroe calls them—to instruct them on how to rig the cars to the high points of the atrium. Much of the late installation work is done in the public eye, on open ramps, while museum patrons come and go.
