The Petrie Institute of Western American Art's 16th annual symposium will consider historical contexts of earthworks—both ancient and contemporary—as well as individual artists and their contributions to land art.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Valley Curtain, a dramatic installation in the Colorado landscape, the Petrie Institute’s 16th annual symposium will explore the history of land art in the West. Making interventions in the landscape and often using earth itself as a medium, artists in the late 1960s and 1970s reimagined artmaking and subverted art world norms.