“I opened with Edward Kienholz's The Beanery, and that's such a controversial piece that I think that brought people right away. It was a room-size work that one walked into. It was a bar with Kienholz-type figures sitting and drinking and talking - all life-size characters in a life-size setting. The exhibition was covered in Time, Newsweek, and Life, so it had huge recognition right away.” PeopleThinkingCharacterDrinkingRecognitionControversial Author:Virginia Dwan
“People should go to the works and experience them. Because just having an idea or picture in mind is absolutely not the experience that's necessary. Even just landing in Albuquerque or Salt Lake City or Las Vegas was immediately part of the experience. And then you'd get in a car from the airport and take these very long trips - in Michael Heizer's case, it was three hours by car to get to his work. And then there's walking around and into the piece and seeing it from different angles. The kinetic experience of being a part of it physically was very important for me.” PeopleMindLongImportantDifferentHoursCarWalking Author:Virginia Dwan
“People tend to view land art as something that happened at a certain historical moment - like minimal art, which I was also very much involved with. But it still goes on. It's very much alive.” PeopleArtMomentsHistorical Author:Virginia Dwan
“What's happening in the larger world always influences art. When I first started the gallery in 1959, one of the first things I learned was that most people assume artists know one thing and one thing only - that they were idiot savants. I found very quickly that most artists were very informed and very aware of what was happening in the world around them. So all of those things go together, especially for earthworks. And at that time there was such an intense interest in American art. So there was a great deal of attention paid to where it was going.” PeopleWorldArtTogetherArtistInterestAttentionInfluenceAssumingIntenseIdiot Author:Virginia Dwan