The Lightning Field

Four hundred polished stainless steel poles set 220 feet apart in a grid one mile long and a little over a kilometer wide, on high desert in western New Mexico. The ground undulates, but the pole tips are set to form a level plane, so the grid is a perfectly regular system laid over an irregular landscape. Lightning is the famous part, but the slower work is watching the poles change with the light over the course of a day. Walter De Maria installed it in 1977, and it is usually counted as Land art as much as Minimalism. Visiting takes commitment: Dia drives visitors from the ranching town of Quemado to a rustic cabin beside the field for an overnight stay, by reservation only, in a season that runs from May through October.