City is a land art sculpture by Michael Heizer in Garden Valley, a desert valley in rural Lincoln County in the U.S. state of Nevada. More than a mile long, it is the largest contemporary artwork ever built.[ 2] [ 3] It was begun in 1972, took 50 years to complete, and cost an estimated $40 million.[ 4] [ 5] City is maintained by the Triple Aught Foundation and opened on September 2, 2022, to limited, reservation-only viewing by a maximum of six visitors per day.[ 5] [ 6]
Like Heizer's 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 local dirt, rock, sand, and concrete as building materials, and assembled with heavy machinery,[ 7] the work is composed of five phases, each consisting of a number of structures called complexes, with some of the structures reaching a height of 80 feet (24 m).
City attempts to synthesize ancient monuments, minimalism and industrial technology. Heizer's inspiration for the work came while he was visiting Yucatan and studying Chichen Itza.[ 8]