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It's not the typical museum installation: a chunk of a massive military plane.

The spar of a C-131, a military transport decommissioned in 1956, was maneuvered into The Leonardo — Salt Lake City's arts-and-technology museum — on Monday as part of the center's first large-scale in-house exhibit, "Flight."

"We have welcomed a lot of cool exhibits before, but never an airplane," Alexandra Hesse, executive director of The Leonardo, said Monday.

The spar weighs 9,000 pounds and is more than 28 feet long. Workers from Intermountain Rigging and HeavyHaul used a crane to lift the plane section off a flatbed truck and onto the driveway at Library Square. Then a heavy forklift pulled the spar, mounted on wheeled frames, to a newly installed garage door in The Leonardo's northeast corner.

Jacob Middaugh, project manager for Jacobsen Construction, said his company was adding steel beams to the building's existing steel columns, to support the weight of both the C-131 and the Soviet-era MiG-21 fighter jet that was mounted from The Leonardo's ceiling over the weekend.

Middaugh's boss, Matt Rich, vice president of Jacobsen Construction, said The Leonardo's plans to refit the building — formerly the main branch of the Salt Lake City Public Library — sounded a bit crazy at first.

"But we like crazy people," Rich said, "people who think outside the box, people who think of what can be, not just what is."

More sections of the C-131 — the wings, fuselage and tail — were set to be delivered and installed this week, said Marissa de Simone, The Leonardo's exhibits director.

Once reassembled, the C-131 will boast a wingspan of 105 feet, which will run from one side of The Leonardo's main exhibit space to the other.

The Leonardo purchased the C-131 and the MiG-21 for "Flight," an ambitious exhibit set to open Aug. 6. It's set to take the space previously occupied by such massive touring shows as "Body Worlds," "Mummies of the World" and "The Dead Sea Scrolls."

Hesse said she and her staff are excited about "Flight," in part because "our namesake, Leonardo da Vinci, was really interested in learning how to fly."

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