> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# US Senator Proposes Conservation Expanse for Michael Heizer's Land Art
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/us-senator-proposes-conservation-expanse-for-michael-heizers-land-art/
- Published: 2014-11-04T23:35:14.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:32:30.000Z
- Description: A bill quietly introduced by United States Senator Harry Reid would protect an 800,000-acre swath of Nevada desert containing the land art works of Michael Heizer, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
- Author: Mostafa Heddaya
- Tags: In Brief, Michael Heizer, Nevada, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:03 (2014, 2015, part 1)

![Michael Heizer's "Double Negative," as seen in Google Earth](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/04/heizer-map.jpg)

Michael Heizer’s “Double Negative,” as seen in Google Earth (screenshot via Google Earth)

A bill quietly introduced by United States Senator Harry Reid would protect an 800,000-acre swath of Nevada desert containing the land artworks of Michael Heizer, the *Las Vegas Review-Journal* [reported](http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nevada/sen-reid-quietly-moves-block-development-800000-acres-central-nevada?ref=hyperallergic.com). Hailed by conservationists, the legislation was introduced by the Nevada Senator, its only listed sponsor, on September 16.

Reid had previously proposed a similar effort in 2010, according to an official from Lincoln County, home both to Heizer and his works. The official, Ed Higbee, told the paper that Heizer’s *City* complex, which represents four decades of effort, was “kind of neat stuff,” but that the county opposed the proposal. “We don’t want that to become a national conservation area,” he said.

Among the most well-trafficked works in the area is Heizer’s “Double Negative” (1969–70), two 1,500-foot incisions into the landscape that the artist has [described](http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/25/entertainment/la-et-lacma-rock-sculptor-20120525/2?ref=hyperallergic.com) as “longer than the Empire State Building lying on its side.” Los Angeles County Museum of Art Director Michael Govan, whose institution prominently features Heizer’s “[Levitated Mass](http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/levitated-mass?ref=hyperallergic.com),” has long supported the artist’s desert development. “It is perhaps one of the greatest, most ambitious artworks ever attempted,” Govan told the *Las Vegas Review-Journal.*

In 2005, Heizer’s work — and the Lincoln County landscape surrounding it — was [threatened by a proposed Department of Energy rail line](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/magazine/06HEIZER.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) carrying nuclear waste from Yucca Mountain. Both the artist and Senator Reid opposed the line, and the College Art Association [adopted a resolution](http://www.collegeart.org/resolutions/michaelheizer?ref=hyperallergic.com) against the Department of Energy’s plan, calling it deleterious to Heizer’s *City*, “an artwork of national and international significance.” Those plans were scrapped, but the future of the surrounding land remains, unless Reid’s bill passes, unsecured.

*h/t* [The Art Newspaper](http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Move-to-protect-Heizers-City-from-development/36231?ref=hyperallergic.com)