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Salt Lake City launches "Wake the Great Salt Lake" installation with $1 million Bloomberg grant
Summary
Salt Lake City Arts Council unveiled Wake the Great Salt Lake, a Bloomberg‑funded public art project that will stage Olafur Eliasson's "Symphony of Disappearing Sounds" in Memory Grove, using projections and a half‑hour soundscape to draw attention to the lake's decline.
Felicia Baca, executive director of the Salt Lake City Arts Council, opened the event by announcing that Salt Lake City won a $1,000,000 Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge grant to support Wake the Great Salt Lake, which will place Olafur Eliasson's installation in Memory Grove from March 26 to April 4. Baca thanked local funders and partners and directed listeners to wakegsl.org for tickets.
Stephanie Dockery of Bloomberg Philanthropies praised the program's national reach and noted past projects' scale: "These projects ... have attracted over 41,000,000 views, built public private partnerships, and catalyzed over a $100,000,000 in economic benefit," she said. The installation combines a 10–12 meter inflatable sphere, projected imagery derived from materials found in and around the Great Salt Lake, and a roughly 30‑minute sound composition made from about 150 field recordings of lake wildlife and insects. The event organizers emphasized the project aims to raise awareness and stimulate civic conversation rather than purely entertain.
