Michael Heizer’s immense sculpture the City, an ambitious artwork of an extraordinary size, will begin to accept visits from the public beginning September 2, 2022. The announcement was made by the Triple Aught Foundation, the not-for-profit organization responsible for managing the long-term oversight and maintenance of Michael Heizer’s immense sculpture. The artwork, a mile and a half long and nearly half a mile wide, is located in a remote stretch of the high Nevada desert. Work on the structure began in 1972 when the artist was 27 years old.
The ambitious artwork has acquired an almost legendary status in the world. Composed of shaped mounds and depressions made of compacted dirt, rock, and concrete, the City merges Heizer’s interests in non-inhabited forms in Native American traditions of mound-building, the pre-Columbian cities of Central and South America, and his studies of Egyptian construction. The artist has been buying remote parcels of property in Nevada’s Garden Valley over the decades, consolidating them into the ideal location for his sculpture. Most of the materials used are mined from the land itself.
Approaching the cut on foot from the north or south, elements of a cityscape seem to be rising or falling from within the excavation that cuts flat into the rising ridge… As one walks up to an overlook, Heizer’s cultural interventions open out the space. The roads and domes and pits within the excavation are elegantly curbed into long, quiet Sumerian curves. They restore our sense of distance and scale, so the complexity of City reveals itself as a gracious intervention in the desert… composed and complete. - art critic Dave Hickey
In 2015 the project was one of the causes for the designation of the Basin and Range National Monument. According to the New York Times, this was a reaction to prior plans which proposed the construction of a national rail system to transport nuclear waste to the nearby Yucca Mountain.
Michael Heizer is known for producing large outdoor earthwork sculptures and for his work with rock, concrete, and steel. Before the City, he was an influential figure in the second half of the 20th century. His best-known work is the “Double Negative”, a monumental art created out of negative space, as the result of blasting 240,000 tons of rock from the slopes of the Mormon mesa in Nevada. His earthworks, which live outside in the environment, are known to elicit responses not common to architecturally dependent artworks.
Construction of the City was originally funded by Heizer himself, eventually joined by individuals and institutions including renowned gallerist Virginia Dwan, Dia Art Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Lannan Foundation. The Triple Aught Foundation, established in 1998 to help complete the work, owns and manages the City and is charged with its long-term preservation. Advance reservations for visits are now available for dates between September 2 and November 1.
