LOS ANGELES—The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has acquired The Illegal Operation, a landmark 1962 sculpture about back-street abortion by Ed Kienholz, the Los Angeles Times reports. A coalition of 16 donors came together to provide funds to purchase the work from L.A. owner the Betty and Monte Factor Collection; LACMA will not say how much it paid, but sources close to the fund-raising campaign say it was roughly $1 million.

The relative calm surrounding the acquisition is surprising given the history of controversy that Kienholz's work has inspired at LACMA. In 1966, when the museum mounted a retrospective of his work, the country board of supervisors threatened to shut it down (but never did). One work in particular, Back Seat Dodge '38, which depicts a drunken sexual encounter, came under fire.

Fifteen years later, the museum bought Dodge, causing some members of a support group that contributed to the purchase to resign in protest.

This time around, the group that had been split over helping to fund the purchase of Dodge, the Art Museum Council, contributed $500,000 after a unanimous decision in favor of the LACMA purchase. Terry Bell, a LACMA trustee and longtime member of the council, said that in 1981, proponents of Dodge had "a real selling job to do. There were hard feelings about it.... This time, there wasn't one 'nay' anywhere."

She attributes the change in attitude to "time and the fact that we are better informed."

Stephanie Barron, the senior curator of modern art at LACMA, led the campaign to buy The Illegal Operation along with Henry T. Hopkins, a veteran museum director and UCLA professor emeritus with close ties to Kienholz. The pair were not the only museum representatives vying for the sculpture; the Tate Gallery and a number of other European institutions approached owner Monte Factor.

But Factor was struck by Barron and her quest. "Stephanie really does get the piece," he said. And according to Barron, "This was one of the most important postwar sculptures in L.A., and it really belonged at the museum."