Among the prospective purchasers in mid-2006 was The MAK Museum for Applied Art in Vienna and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, represented by its new director, Michael Govan. To that end, he invited visitors to view the street lamps outside his studio, where he had installed them in dense rows on two sides of the building. While he later sent 14 lamps to an exhibition in London, his goal was to keep as much of his then 150-piece collection together as possible. In late 2003, Burden discussed installing a hundred of the lamps at the Gagosian Gallery in New York, but the gallery eventually balked at the cost.
As Burden's collection grew, the ground around his Topanga Canyon studio became littered with parts, which the artist referred to as "lamp carcasses". Burden purchased others from contractor and collector Anna Justice, who was instrumental in the restoration of sandblasting, recasting missing parts, rewiring to code, and then painting a uniform grey. The vendor, Jeff Levine, had been restoring the lamps by salvaging parts and later sold Burden more of his collection. He purchased his first two lamps at the Rose Bowl Flea Market at $800 each after they were pointed out by curator Paul Schimmel's son Max. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Susan Freudenheim described the restored lamps as displaying "elaborate floral and geometric patterns" at the base, with "fluted shafts and glass globes that cap ticulously cleaned, painted and refurbished to create an exuberant glow." History īurden first began collecting street lamps in December 2000 without a specific work in mind, and continued collecting them for the next seven years. The 309 LED bulbs are solar powered and switch on from dusk until dawn, governed by an astronomical timer. The sculpture's glass globes are of three general shapes: round, acorn, and cone. The style was found in downtown Los Angeles a few can still be seen on Sixth Avenue between Olive and Flower Streets. The Broadway Rose, the largest and most ornate of the models, is represented by six lamps. There are 16 different streetlight models represented, many of which were commissioned for particular neighborhoods and streets. The lamps mostly came from the streets of Southern California, including Hollywood, Glendale, and Anaheim, with some from Portland, Oregon.
Urban Light is composed of 202 street lamps arranged in a near grid.