City (artwork)

City is a piece of earth art located in Garden Valley, a desert valley in rural Lincoln County in the U.S. state of Nevada, near the border with Nye County. The work was begun in 1972 by the artist Michael Heizer and is ongoing. When complete, it will be one of the largest sculptures ever built.

City will open to the public in 2020.

Like Heizer's previous Double Negative (1969), City is designed and executed on a massive scale. Covering a space approximately one and a quarter miles long and more than a quarter of a mile wide (2 km by 0.4 km, roughly the scale of the National Mall), City is one of the largest sculptures ever created. Using earth, rocks, sand and concrete as building materials and assembled with heavy machinery, the work comprises five phases, each consisting of a number of structures referred to as complexes, with some of the structures reaching a height of eighty feet.

City attempts to synthesize ancient monuments, Minimalism and industrial technology. Heizer's inspiration for the work came while he was visiting the Yucatan and studying Chichen Itza. Heizer also cites an interest in the ceremonial squares and associated civic monuments of cites.

The cost of City is being financed by several patrons, including the Dia Art Foundation and Lannan Foundation, with an estimated cost of well over twenty five million USD. The work is located on a large parcel of private land owned by the artist and is closed to the public until its completion. Heizer is currently completing the work with a team of roughly a dozen and had, as of 2005, anticipated completion before 2010. As of Spring 2015 City is not yet open to the public. Visitors are explicitly not welcome, and due to its orientation away from the road and system of earthen berms no part of "City" can be viewed from the ground without trespassing on posted property, but photos have been assembled here and here.

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