Behind the Scenes of Gagosian’s Massive Michael Heizer Show

“There was a moment when I saw a pile of dirt in the middle of the gallery and I thought: ‘Gee, I hope Larry doesn’t come by right now.”

So said Kara Vander Weg, a Gagosian managing director, while recapping the intense and precise efforts required to produce the latest New York show at the mega gallery run by Larry Gagosian.

Michael Heizer’s “Negative Sculpture,” which occupies Gagosian’s entire West 21st Street space, features steel liners that are filled with crushed red granite and that curve elegantly through the gallery’s floor, creating a mesmerizing ribbon-like effect.

A key figure in Land Art, Heizer has long experimented with the possibilities of negative space. Since he joined Gagosian in 2013, he and his team had been thinking “maybe we could put a negative sculpture in the ground,” Vander Weg said. “At first it seemed unworkable because we didn’t want to cut into the ground. That involves going to the buildings department. It’s very complicated slicing a floor.”

Over the last two years, the artist created various “investigations to make sure that we could, in fact, build up the ground to accommodate the sculptures, and of course make it safe for visitors to walk around,” Vander Weg said. (She has an especially close understanding of Heizer’s work: The two are married.)

Heizer settled on the idea of raising the floor of the gallery, which meant that the sculptures could be assembled elsewhere. The two works, titled and (both 2024), were constructed at the artist’s studio on his ranch in remote Nevada, near his enormous sculpture (1970–22).

They were broken down into sections, loaded onto flatbed trucks, and transported from Nevada to New York. After a few weeks in storage, they were hauled to the 9,200-square-foot gallery.

Vander Weg said that it was “not as complicated as some of the larger, heavier works we’ve installed in that space before.”

The gallery worked with master riggers Budco Enterprises, which has also handled shipping and installation for massive Richard Serra steelworks, including those in the “Running Arcs” show that preceded Heizer’s outing at the gallery. (There are installation and time-lapse videos on YouTube and Instagram.)

The crushed granite that was brought in to fill the negative sculptures had to be dried and cleaned, in order to eliminate impurities so it would appear uniform.

All went according to plan, but there was some question about the color of the poured concrete floor, “which was very important to Michael,” Vander Weg said. Heizer wanted it to be identical to the color of the ground where they were produced.

Numerous tests were conducted. “When I saw it, I understood why the color was so important,” Vander Weg said. “I think it really highlights the sculpture in a different way than if it had just been gray concrete. It makes the sculpture feel ethereal.”

On opening night a couple weeks ago, the gallery was packed but oddly serene as viewers carefully wandered around the work. Guidelines at the entrance include: “Caution: Floor Openings Ahead—Watch Your Step.”

This past Saturday, the gallery said that it saw 2,000 visitors to the show, as well as significant attendance at its nearby show for Jeff Koons, whose hulking sculptures Budco also handled. I asked if Gagosian consciously aimed to stage so many blockbusters right now.

“Because we have so many spaces, we are always thinking about the right fit for each artist,” Vander Weg said. “And it just happened that the Chelsea galleries were right for Richard Serra, Michael Heizer, and Jeff Koons.” It was a “happy coincidence that Serra and Heizer happened in sequence.”

And yes, the works are for sale. Gagosian did not disclose prices, but knowledgeable sources told me that similar Heizer sculptures have gone for around $5 million, and that his installations can range up to $15 million. (The Glenstone museum outside Washington, D.C., has two major examples.)

Any deep-pocketed collector who bites will have some options. “It can go outside, it can go inside,” Vander Weg said, and it need not be bordered by concrete. “Whether it would be surrounded by gravel, dirt, sand, maybe grass, that is all TBD based on the location,” she said.

“Yes it takes some work to install something like this,” she told me, “but it’s worth it.”