One of Utah’s landmarks of the “land art” movement, Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, will be undergoing a major conservation effort to repair decades of damage in the Great Basin Desert.
Dia Art Foundation, the New York-based nonprofit that manages such works as Sun Tunnels and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, announced Tuesday it would be doing the conservation work in early May.
It’s the first conservation work done on Sun Tunnels since Holt built it, from 1973 to 1976. Since then, the 18-foot-long concrete cylinders, aligned to the sunrise and sunset at the summer and winter solstices, have endured cracking and erosion in the extreme hot and cold weather conditions.