In 1967, in an apparent rejection of art as ‘a malleable barter-exchange item’, as he put it, the US artist Michael Heizer struck out to make vast sculptures in the deserts of the American Southwest. Comments such as Heizer’s contributed to an idealized, if oversimplified, narrative that those who created earthworks outdoors were stridently opposed to the commodified art market system. But while many of the most famous outdoor sculptures from the 1960s onwards were deliberately intended to sit outside of the gallery system, gallerists and private patrons have played pivotal roles in most, if not all, of the careers and legacies of the major figures of Land Art. And for some, those careers – and markets – are only now being fully recognized.

Purchasing land was usually the first step in creating earthworks – a sometimes problematic proposal where Indigenous rights were concerned. In the case of Heizer’s Double Negative (1969), the influential patron and dealer Virginia Dwan funded the acquisition of around 60 acres of land on Mormon Mesa in Nevada, where Heizer dug two trenches measuring 9 meters wide and 15 meters deep. Dwan was also instrumental in realizing Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) on the shore of the Great Salt Lake, donating USD 9,000 to the project, though the lakebed land is still managed under a lease from the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.

Another American dealer, Robert Scull, was a key supporter of several early earthworks, underwriting Heizer’s productive summer of 1968, which culminated in Nine Nevada Depressions (1968), enormous zig-zagging trenches dug out of the Nevada desert. The Dia Art Foundation, which was cofounded in 1974 by the German art dealer Heiner Friedrich, Philippa de Menil (heir to the Schlumberger oilfield services company), and the art historian Helen Winkler Fosdick, has commissioned and funded works including Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977) – and is to this day the custodian of many more outdoor pieces, including Spiral Jetty.

Nancy Holt, whose first major UK show opens at the Goodwood Art Foundation in Sussex on May 2, was something of an anomaly, raising her own funds to purchase the 40-acre site where she installed her most famous earthwork, Sun Tunnels, between 1973 and 1976. ‘Back then male artists were supported by dealers, but none of the female artists were,’ says Lisa Le Feuvre, the director of the Holt/Smithson Foundation. Holt and Smithson married in 1963, 10 years before Smithson died in a plane crash, aged just 35.

After Sun Tunnels, most of Holt’s outdoor works were commissioned and paid for independently; her teaching and work as a copy editor supported the rest of her artistic practice. ‘It was all about having control, and not being beholden to the system,’ says the writer, curator, and former gallerist Ben Tufnell, who organized three commercial exhibitions of Holt’s photographs and smaller sculptures in London between 2012 and 2020. Only 12 to 15 works found homes over the course of those shows, with her photography being the most popular among collectors. Single-image photographs were then priced between USD 10,000 and USD 20,000.

Both Holt’s and Smithson’s markets remained largely dormant until the establishment of the Holt/Smithson Foundation in 2018. The organization is set to wind down in 2038, and the current mandate is to find permanent homes for the artists’ works. In 2021, Sprüth Magers began to represent Holt, while Marian Goodman Gallery took on Smithson in 2020. Championing Holt’s oeuvre has so far been the foundation’s priority and, together with Sprüth Magers, it has now dispersed almost 50% of her works. The Guggenheim, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Hirshhorn Museum have recently acquired pieces. Private collectors are investing, too. Last year, Powder Mountain, a ski resort in Utah owned by Netflix founder Reed Hastings, bought Holt’s Starfire (1986). Another major outdoor work, Hydra’s Head (1974), goes on show for the first time since 1974 at Goodwood in May, with a view to permanently placing it.

For many Land Art practitioners, gallery representation came later in life. Though Larry Gagosian had long-term relationships with both Heizer and De Maria, it was not until 2013 that he officially took on Heizer and 2014 that he started to represent De Maria’s estate. Pace Gallery’s relationship with James Turrell dates to 1967, but the firm formalized the arrangement only in 2003. As Pace’s chief executive Marc Glimcher points out, galleries in the 1960s and 1970s bore ‘no resemblance’ to galleries today. ‘Dealers worked alongside artists and writers and curators, there was no hierarchy,’ he adds.

Kara Vander Weg, a director at Gagosian who married Heizer in 2022, notes that there was no market to speak of when Land Art was in its infancy. ‘The whole concept was about getting away from the white box of the gallery and doing something that was outside, but also more controllable by the artist, less expensive,’ she says.

For almost two decades, Heizer showed sporadically with dealers including Ann Freedman and Peter Freeman, who chiefly sold his drawings and paintings (Heizer started out as a painter; his auction record stands at USD 1.1 million for Track Painting (1967), which sold from the Macklowe collection in 2021). The turning point in his market came with his first show at Gagosian in 2015, which featured a mixture of historical paintings and rock sculptures. It was a ‘complicated process,’ Vander Weg recalls, not least because there was no benchmark for pricing the works.

Since then, Gagosian has organized five exhibitions by Heizer. His latest, which closed in March, was no less ambitious than some of his outdoor sculptures, consisting of two steel-framed trenches constructed at the artist’s Nevada ranch and transported to Manhattan. Vander Weg notes how demand for Heizer’s work has grown ‘considerably’ over the past decade as the gallery has ‘exposed more collectors to his work and given them confidence in the market.’ She adds: ‘We’ve also been able to help with the logistics, so it’s not so daunting to acquire a large sculpture.’

In 2022, Heizer opened his vast sculptural complex, City, which he began in 1970 and has cost a reported USD 40 million to realize. Crucial support has come from Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the late Nevada senator Harry Reid, among others. Now managed by the Triple Aught Foundation, tickets to view City cost USD 150 and are highly sought after (Indigenous peoples go free). The move has brought ‘greater visibility to his tremendous art-historical impact,’ Vander Weg says, as well as attracting a younger generation of collectors. ‘It’s a totally immersive experience. You’re not allowed to take photographs, which means you’re completely receptive to whatever happens,’ she says. ‘It’s like Lightning Field. There you have no cell service, so you are removed from all social networks. Taking yourself out of that is the most radical thing you can do in this world right now.’

Glimcher suggests the ‘entry level’ to Turrell’s market today is not via his prints or smaller ‘Glassworks’ (priced around USD 1 million), which have just been shown in Pace’s Seoul gallery, but through seeing his large-scale sculptures in the open or at the Miami immersive art space, Superblue. Though more often associated with Light Art than with Land Art, Turrell was nonetheless creating work concurrently with the likes of Holt, Smithson, and Heizer – who explored similar themes of perception and humanity’s place in the cosmos.

Even at this level, cost is a serious consideration. Roden Crater, Turrell’s monumental, ongoing work that has transformed an extinct volcanic cinder cone into an observatory, has yet to open to the public, but extremely limited access has been available to patrons for USD 6,500. Funds are still being raised for the project, which carries an estimated final cost of USD 200 million. Support has come from foundations, corporations, and individuals including the philanthropist David Booth and the musician Kanye West, who donated a reported USD 10 million in 2019.

Pace Gallery declined to comment on how much the public will have to pay to view the completed work, but Glimcher is confident collectors and art lovers alike will make the pilgrimage. ‘That’s what we are supposed to be paying for, not a speculative alternative asset class,’ he says. ‘This is a battle for the soul of art – and I have never failed to see somebody permanently changed by their experience of seeing Roden Crater.’