Land art
Land art is an artistic movement that uses landscapes and natural materials as both medium and setting, often creating large-scale works outdoors.
Site-specific art: Art conceived for a particular location, whose features are integral to its form or meaning. Land art makes the landscape itself part of the work’s site and meaning.
Spiral Jetty: Robert Smithson’s 1970 coil of rock and earth extending into Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Its monumental spiral makes land art’s direct use of geology especially legible.
Robert Smithson: An American artist and writer whose earthworks and essays helped define land art. His Spiral Jetty and writing linked landscape sculpture to entropy and industrial history.
Earthworks (1968 exhibition): A 1968 Dwan Gallery exhibition in New York featuring artists who worked with earth and landscape. The exhibition helped bring emerging landscape-based practices into view as a movement.
Art documentation: Photographs, films, texts, and records that describe or preserve an artwork and its making. Remote or altered works often reach wider audiences through photographs and written accounts.
Environmental art: Art that engages with natural environments, ecological processes, or human effects on them. Land art sits within this broader practice, though not all environmental art alters landscapes.
Double Negative: Michael Heizer’s 1969–70 earthwork, formed by two large cuts in Nevada’s Mormon Mesa. Its paired excavations define sculpture through removal rather than added material.
Nancy Holt: An American artist known for installations that connect landscape, perception, and astronomical phenomena. Her site works bring measurement and celestial cycles into land art.
Dwan Gallery: A New York and Los Angeles gallery that supported major artists associated with minimalism and land art. Virginia Dwan’s exhibitions and patronage helped land art gain institutional visibility.
Art conservation: The study and practice of preserving artworks and their material and historical significance. Weathering and erosion complicate decisions about whether a land artwork should be repaired or allowed to change.