michael heizer's colossal city in nevada desert opens to the public

michael heizer’s city is completed after 50 years in the making

Following more than half a century in the making, Michael Heizer’s monumental sculpture, the ‘City’, in Central Eastern Nevada, is finally completed. The project’s opening on September 2, 2022, marks the fruition of Heizer’s most ambitious lifetime project, which construction began in the desert of Nevada in 1970. Comprised of shaped mounds and depressions made of compacted dirt, rock, and concrete, the installation spreads a mile and a half in length and a half mile in width in the vast topography.

Its colossal size and brutal forms evoke the scale and formation of many ancient constructions, such as pre-Columbian complexes or Egyptian ceremonial structures. The enormous, open-air artwork is located in a valley in the isolated Great Basin, while in June of 2015, both the ‘City’ and surrounding area were declared the Basin and Range National Monument to protect the ancestral territories as a massive gift to culture for generations to come. Heizer’s chef-d’oeuvre, which is described as the largest artwork ever created, stimulates visitors’ instincts and senses, inviting them into a unique journey of exploration. Guests are welcome to wander through its graduated stone lanes and extensive geometrical concrete masses without following specific pathways, signs, and instructions.

45°, 90°, 180°, City © Michael Heizer. Courtesy of the artist and Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Ben Blackwell

a lifetime project comes to fruition

Michael Heizer started to build the ‘City’ in the early 1970s, spending years acquiring remote parcels of property to create the ideal location for his sculpture. For this project, he employed materials mined from the land and collected with minimally invasive means, celebrating and honoring the natural resources of the region. The ‘City’ started as a continuation of the work he had created in the West where he was born, beginning with the ‘negative North and South’ in the Sierras (1967), and anticipating the epoch-making ‘Double Negative’ at Mormon Mesa (1969). The result sees a lifetime triumph of breathtaking complexity and size, fusing elements from ancient ceremonial constructions with forms of a modern city’s central hub.

Initially, the legendary sculpture was self-funded by the artist, but through the years, the construction was supported by institutions and individuals, including Virginia Dwan, Dia Art Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Lannan Foundation. The Triple Aught Foundation, a non-profit institution based in Nevada, was established in 1998 to support the realization, while it has recently established an endowment with initial funding of close to $30 million. The institution now accepts a limited number of short day trips by advance reservation and only in favorable weather, inviting visitors to experience this signature piece.

Describing the City, art critic Dave Hickey wrote, ‘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.’

Complex One, City. © Michael Heizer. Courtesy of the artist and Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Mary Converse

Triple Aught Foundation Board member and renowned gallerist Virginia Dwan said, ‘Michael Heizer is one of the greatest innovators of our time and I still believe today what I thought when Heizer began the City, that this work demanded to be built. It is extraordinary that he has completed one of the most important artworks of this century, over decades in the making, and I have been fortunate enough to witness this transformative sculptural intervention from the very beginning.’

Triple Aught Foundation Board member Michael Govan, CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, commented, ‘Over the years I would sometimes compare Michael Heizer’s City project to some of the most important ancient monuments and cities. But now I only compare it to itself. It’s an artwork aware of our primal impulses to build and organize space, but it incorporates our modernity, our awareness of and reflection upon the subjectivity of our human experience of time and space as well as the many histories of civilizations we have built. Working with Michael Heizer for more than 25 years to help him realize his City project has been one of the most important experiences of my own life and work.’