{"id":1388,"date":"2022-01-07T08:47:23","date_gmt":"2022-01-07T00:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/?p=1388"},"modified":"2022-01-07T12:32:52","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T04:32:52","slug":"how-late-politician-harry-reid-helped-michael-heizer-realize-his-magnum-opus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/how-late-politician-harry-reid-helped-michael-heizer-realize-his-magnum-opus\/","title":{"rendered":"How Late Politician Harry Reid Helped Michael Heizer Realize His Magnum Opus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harry Reid<\/a>, the former Senate majority leader who died on Tuesday at the age of 82, is remembered for his pugnacious political style and for backing Democratic causes over the years. A lesser-known part of his legacy\u2014one that\u2019s arguably just as enduring as his political feats\u2014is his campaign to preserve Nevada land that is host to a famed\u00a0Michael Heizer<\/a>\u00a0Land artwork.<\/p>\n

After more than 40 years in limbo, Heizer finished his magnum opus,\u00a0City<\/em>, in the Nevada desert in 2020 with Reid\u2019s help. Spanning more than a mile and a half long and formatted in style of pre-Columbian ceremonial metropolises,\u00a0City\u00a0<\/em>is a totemic structure composed of rocks and debris mined from the site\u2019s Garden Valley. Heizer envisioned the work as something that could outlast human intervention in the surrounding environment and become something like an archaeological site for the future generations.<\/p>\n

One of the most influential artists of the Land art movement of the 1960s and \u201970s, Heizer started working on\u00a0City<\/em>\u00a0in 1972 while still in his 20s. Like his colleagues Walter De Maria and Robert Smithson, Heizer often harnessed the potential of sprawling vacant spaces in the American West and sought to create minimal structures on a maximal scale. He was fascinated by immensity of the Nevada desert, where Reid had found solace while growing up in the remote town of Searchlight.<\/p>\n

Located near an Air Force base and a nuclear test site, in an area that had long been eyed by developers,\u00a0City\u00a0<\/em>faced an uncertain future. Heizer bought up acres in the Garden Valley to build the imagined complex in the 1970s, but\u00a0construction eventually stalled out when funding for the project ran low. In the1990s, art world figures got involved, with Michael Govan, then the director of the Dia Art Foundation in New York, campaigning to raise a majority of the $17 million needed to complete\u00a0City.\u00a0<\/em>It was clear, however, that Heizer was going to have to search elsewhere, too, for help.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, threats to the land on which\u00a0City<\/em>\u00a0was already sited were looming. In the early \u201900s, lawmakers introduced a plan to use the land surrounding the artwork to build a rail line termed the \u201cGlow Train.\u201d Trains running along the line were to transport nuclear waste to a repository at the nearby Yucca Mountain outside Las Vegas. The government also considered using\u00a0 the area as a launch site for the Peacekeeper, an experimental missile that was scuttled amid disarmament treaties in 2005.<\/p>\n

An advocate for preserving the Garden and Coal Valleys, Reid was a\u00a0noted opponent of the \u201cGlow Train<\/a>\u201d plan, which would allow the empty areas between Nye and Lincoln Counties, where\u00a0City<\/em>\u00a0was to be located, to potentially become a waste site. After becoming aware of Heizer\u2019s project and visiting it in 2007, Reid was enthralled by Heizer\u2019s embrace of the Nevada landscape\u2019s unaltered majesty. It was, for the Democratic senator, an antidote to the idea of the valley as an untapped ground for the military and developers.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Reid helped usher in a landmark proclamation issued by President Barack Obama that protected more than 700,000 acres of the land surrounding\u00a0City<\/em>. The law, decried by some Republican lawmakers, made\u00a0City\u00a0<\/em>a part of the Basin and Range National Monument. It protected the artwork from ever being destroyed and ended proposed attempts to building a nuclear rail line in its place. By the end of Reid\u2019s political tenure, during which he also supported more conservative-leaning pro-life and pro-gun policies, around 85 percent of Nevada\u2019s land became federally owned, ensuring that it would be protected from oil drilling and mining.<\/p>\n

City<\/em>\u00a0was not the only significant work that Reid helped protect\u2014Native American works, including rock art at the Shooting Gallery, where prehistoric rock carvings are still visible, were also saved. But Reid always spoke most highly of Heizer\u2019s contribution to the Nevada landscape. In 2015, Reid described\u00a0City\u00a0<\/em>as a feat \u201cas visionary as anything<\/a> that one can imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source\uff1ahttps:\/\/www.artnews.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader who died on Tuesday at the age of 82, is remembered for his pugnacious political style and for backing Democratic causes over the years. A lesser-known part of his legacy\u2014one that\u2019s arguably just as enduring as his political feats\u2014is his campaign to preserve Nevada land that is host […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,7,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1388","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artist","8":"category-auction","9":"category-events","10":"category-gallery","11":"category-latest-news"},"yoast_head":"\nHow Late Politician Harry Reid Helped Michael Heizer Realize His Magnum Opus - Investable Art Auctioneer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader who died on Tuesday at the age of 82, is remembered for his pugnacious political style and for backing Democratic causes over the years.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/how-late-politician-harry-reid-helped-michael-heizer-realize-his-magnum-opus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Late Politician Harry Reid Helped Michael Heizer Realize His Magnum Opus - 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