Heizer "City" Tickets Will Cost $150
 |
| Michael Heizer, City (detail), 1970—. Image (c) Michael Heizer/Triple Aught Foundation. Photo by Tom Vinetz |
A New York Times feature has spectacular photos and drone video of Michael Heizer's City. The career-defining earthwork, 50 years in the making, will have a soft opening to visitors in September. But the site in the Nevada desert isn't easy to get to, and the visit won't be cheap. Michael Kimmelman writes,
…visitors can soon apply for tickets on the Triple Aught website. Free to residents of Lincoln, Nye and White Pine Counties, admission for others will cost up to $150, money that will go toward an estimated annual operating budget of some $1.3 million. Because Heizer fears crowds diluting the experience, the current plan is only six tickets a day—about the number of seats on a SpaceX flight—and only on some days during certain times of year, suggesting long wait times.
Visitors will also need to get themselves to Alamo, Nev., a nearish town. They’ll then be picked up, allowed to roam “City” for a few hours and, because there are no lights on the road and no cellphone service, they will be driven back before dark, meaning they won’t get to see the sun rise and set, prime hours. Never mind no gift shop. There aren’t even benches.
Do the math. If there are 10,000 earth-art fans wanting to see City, and they sell six tickets a day, it would take nearly 1700 days to meet the initial demand. Say they're open 300 days a year. That's nearly 6 years to meet the initial demand (before Las Vegas starts promoting it as a bucket-list side trip).
Comments
Stick with the brilliant work of Heizer's in your own backyard -- literally: the 340-ton chunk of granite perched over a long, low concrete trench ... his 'Levitated Mass'.
It's behind LACMA, and you don't even need a ticket to enjoy it.
I thought a “city” is supposed to have people in it? A desolate city is NOT a city.
Art is supposedly for the people and for enjoyment. This has NO joy in it.
I refuse to support this craziness.
Who cares if this artist spent 50 year and $40 million on it if no one can even see it.
What a waste. Why did The NY Times even waste ink writing this?
You worried about maintenance or vandals? That's why it's a non-profit organisation; Tax-breaks and donations should be helping with that.
Besides, the amount of money it charges is, if we assume that they admit 6 people every day of the year is, at most, gonna cover 20% of the maintenance budget excluding any sort of tax consideration or bank fees.
If you desperately wish to experience an alien landscape with massive monuments, just go into your local city for once and look up at a building. Or spend 150 dollars instead on getting a high-quality art comission based off of Heizer's "City". Because that money would at least be spent on someone who'll actually see that money.