At long last, Michael Heizer’s installation City (1970–2022), a vast complex of sculptural interventions in the Nevada desert, is finally complete.
On Friday, the Triple Aught Foundation, the nonprofit Heizer had founded to help fund the epic project, announced that visits can be made to City starting on September 2 by reservation only. It will be the first time that the general public is allowed to see the piece —an iconic work of the Land art movement—in full.
Millions of dollars and years in the making, City is more than a mile and a half long. Few other contemporary artworks in the world equal it in scale, and because of that, many have been anticipating it for years.
Portions of it are composed of dirt, rock, and concrete, and there are parts that are labeled “Complexes” because they appear to resemble urban units from a long-lost civilization. Like many works by Heizer, the project has involved direct interventions into the landscape, which the artist has transformed via elegant, minimalist forms.
Because Heizer’s ambitions were so grand for City, the project involved figures from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Dia Art Foundation, and other organizations, as well as dealer Virginia Dwan, one of Heizer’s earliest and longest supporters.
In a statement on Friday, 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.”
See inside City via the below slideshow.