Timeline Topic: Land Art

Double Negative (1969-70) is a work of land art by the artist Michael Heizer. It is located in the Moapa Valley on Mormon Mesa near Overton, Nevada. Double Negative was acquired into MOCA’s permanent collection in 1985.

“There is nothing there, yet it is still a sculpture.”
-Michael Heizer

Sloan Canyon contains a great many petroglyphs pecked and carved on the canyon walls. Sloan has been called the Sistine Chapel of Native American rock writing due to the size and significance of the images. Native people created more than 300 panels with 1,700 individual design elements. Archaeologists have found petroglyphs that date from the early prehistoric through the late historic periods.

Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, an installation in Northwest Utah, completed in 1976.

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, 1970.

Michael Heizer created Rift 1 from the series Nine Nevada Depressions on the surface of Jean Dry Lake in 1968.

Jean Tinguely’s major desert performance installation Study for an End of the World No. 2 on Jean Dry Lake in 1962.