American artist Michael Heizer uses earth as a medium to challenge the tradition of art as a salable object. Influenced by the ceremonial structures of ancient civilizations, his often-monumental works balance colossal scale and conceptual rigor, making him a leader of the Land art movement in the 1960s. Two of Heizer’s weathering steel sculptures, on view in and outside of the Pavilions, formally employ negative space and unseen force. In Compression Line, 1968/2016, tons of carefully compacted soil push against a large belowground concave metal structure, forcing the two sides to meet at a common midpoint, creating a recessed geometric hollow in the landscape. In contrast, Collapse, 1967/2016, seems comparatively haphazard; massive metal beams—some up to 42 feet long—are composed within a sunken steel cube. Commissioned for Glenstone, the work is based on a wooden model studying chaos structure that the artist created in 1967.

–From the Glenstone Field Guide