He carefully studied scale drawings of the Court of Flags at Los Angeles City Hall and memorized the schedule of police patrols. Then with the timing of a terrorist bomber, he drove up to the plaza in a truck on Labor Day morning, and with four friends unloaded a 3,000-lb., 13-ft. turquoise object that looks something like a huge tuning fork. Wrapped in yellow paper, the untitled work was an unsolicited gift from Wade Cornell, 32, self-styled "guerrilla artist" who boasts: "I give to the people directly."
Two years ago the city dealt with a previous gift from Cornell (a 600-lb., 15-ft....