Urban Light is now the iconic face of Los Angeles County Museum of Art--but it almost wasn’t.

After the museum was redesigned in 2008, the tour de force at its entrance was intended to be a Jeff Koons sculpture of a life-sized steam locomotive dangling from an actual 160-foot crane. Estimated to cost LACMA at least $25 million, the project never panned out, which left an opportunity for another lauded artist to create an equally Instagrammable piece.

Burden began his sculpture rather unintentionally. The first two lampposts that he purchased, at $800 a piece, were originally intended to decorate the end of his driveway. It wasn’t until he began acquiring more and more historic street lights of Los Angeles, scavenged from flea markets and cast-iron collectors in and around LA, that he considered synthesizing them into an installation.

Though it’s a nod to the city’s historic and urban development, Urban Light wasn’t at first intended to be installed in Los Angeles. The idea was to bring a little bit of LA’s culture and urban legacy to other locales--first to a Vienna museum, and when that fell through, to Burden’s gallery in New York. When costs of shipping became prohibitive and other hindrances to installation arose, Burden just did the simple thing: installed the work at his own home and threw a big party to celebrate the lamp lighting. Shortly thereafter, LACMA stepped in and snatched the piece up (with funds from one of the museum’s board co-chairs, also a partner at Goldman Sachs).

By now, LACMA and Burden are accustomed to Urban Light making frequent pop cultural appearances. Future raps in the middle of the installation in his video for Peacoat, Tori Amos drifts through it dreamily in her video for Maybe California, and the sculpture provided romantic ambiance in Valentine’s Day. The most art history-y lightbulb joke happens as Ashton Kutcher wonders aloud while wandering through Urban Light’s lampposts with Natalie Portman in No Strings Attached, “Who changes the lightbulbs? Must be a nightmare.”