Walter De Maria, “The Lightning Field,” Artforum 18, no. 8 (April 1980). All section headings in this essay are drawn from this text.
Dia Art Foundation, “Funding,” Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field (blog) →.
Gucci, “Partnership History,” Gucci and Dia Art Foundation (blog) →.
As indicated on Native-Lands.ca. Not verified with each Indigenous nation.
For more on the history of land as property in relation to this work, I recommend an essay by K-Sue Park that also links the practice of surveying land for settlement to The Lightning Field’s mapping of a grid onto the landscape: Park, “The Lightning Field, the Border, and Real Estate,” X-Tra 21, no. 3 (Spring 2019) →.
“Changing Climate at Spiral Jetty,” Holt/Smithson Foundation →.
Nelia W Dunbar et al., “Climate Change and New Mexico’s Water Resources: A 50-Year Outlook,” New Mexico Earth Matters, 2022.
Peter Elkind, “The Billion-Dollar Loophole,” ProPublica, December 20, 2017 →.
Elkind, “The Billion-Dollar Loophole.”
Dominic Parker, “Congress Limits Conservation Easement Writeoffs—That’s Good for Conservation and Taxpayers,” Property and Environment Research Center, January 13, 2023 →.
De Maria, “Lightning Field.”
Sarah Cascone, “Virginia Dwan, Pioneering Dealer Who Bankrolled Some of Land Art’s Most Daring Masterpieces, Has Died at 90,” Artnet, September 9, 2022 →.
Dia Art Foundation, “Miuccia Prada and Larry Gagosian Make Leadership Gift to Support Preservation of Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field,” press release →.
Another rare public comment about the work’s maintenance came when the work was restored in 2013 with support from prominent gallerist Larry Gagosian and fashion designer Miuccia Prada. Unintentionally invoking Indigenous dispossession around the work, Gagosian said of his contribution to the restoration that “The Lightning Field is like Mount Rushmore for a new generation.” Dia Art Foundation, “Miuccia Prada and Larry Gagosian.”
Email correspondence with Dia Curatorial (curatorial@diaart.org) on July 17, 18, and 29, 2024.
“KRQE Lightning Field,” posted April 19, 2012 by KRQE, YouTube video →.
“Conservation Easement,” in collections at the New Mexico Museum of Art, June 17, 2008.
De Maria, “Lightning Field.”
Alicia Inez Guzmán, “Connected in Isolation: Land and Landscape in New Mexico and the Greater Southwest” (PhD dissertation, University of Rochester, 2016), 165.
Email correspondence with Ruth LaNore, head of Registration and Collections at the New Mexico Museum of Art, July 3, 2024. Emphasis added.
“Assistant Caretaker” job posting, Dia Art Foundation website, April 2025.
Max Liboiron, Pollution Is Colonialism (Duke University Press, 2021), 65.
“Conservation Easement.”
Liboiron, Pollution Is Colonialism, 42.
