Cadillac Ranch is one of the most vibrant and audacious art installations ever created for public consumption – 10 identical Cadillacs buried nose-down in the ground at exactly the same angle as the Great Pyramid of Giza. Located in the windswept outskirts of Amarillo, Texas, observers are invited to become part of the art by spray painting the cars with logos and messages. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the piece, here's a whistle-stop tour through the most exciting outdoor art you can see in the Southwestern US.
Just like Cadillac Ranch, the Dynamite Museum is a disruptive art installation in the Texan city of Amarillo funded by the eccentric artist and millionaire Stanley Marsh 3. It's certainly not a museum in the traditional sense, but an extensive set of road signs scattered around the city bearing slogans like "I am not sure what I am going to do" and "In the dark all cats are gray". There's no particular logic to what the signs say – the project's proprietors simply put up sentences they liked, or suggestions that members of the public had sent in.
The enormous Ethyl the Whale artwork was created entirely with hand-recycled plastic trash. The 82-foot (25m) sculpture of a blue whale is roughly life-sized, and sits proudly behind Santa Fe Community College. Originally commissioned by California's Monterey Bay Aquarium and designed by San Francisco artists Joel Stockdill and Yustina Salnikova, Ethyl holds the world record for the largest recycled-plastic sculpture. She was named for her polyethylene body, which contains the amount of plastic trash produced by one person at age 20.
The Saga is a 24-minute video installation and light show projected onto the facade of San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio's Main Plaza. Created by international artist Xavier de Richemont in 2014, it depicts the discovery, settlement and development of San Antonio, and is shown all year round every evening of the week except Monday. Visitors can brush up on local history, or simply enjoy a dazzling kaleidoscope of colour that covers 7,000 square feet (650sqm).
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For more than five decades, American artist Michael Heizer worked in the hot, remote deserts of Nevada to complete one of the most colossal art installations ever made. A sprawling piece of land art full of mounds, pits and pyramids, City is one and half miles long and half a mile wide, and finally opened in 2022, with only six visitors able to visit at any one time. Located a 30-minute drive from the nearest town and three hours from Las Vegas, £33 million ($40m) has been spent on construction and maintenance of the site – so far. Submissions for the 2023 visitation season have closed.
In Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in southern California, you'll find a unique sculpture garden full of fantastic creatures, including this amazingly intricate serpent-dragon. The artist, Ricardo Breceda, is originally from Durango in Mexico but moved to California and worked initially as a cowboy boot salesman. His metallic creations started as a hobby, but for the last 25 years he's been making them professionally, and created this group of remarkable fantasy creatures in the Borrego Valley.
Her Secret is Patience, by sculptor and fibre artist Janet Echelman, floats above downtown Phoenix – one of many cities around the world to host her work. The 144-foot (44m) aerial sculpture is suspended above the Civic Space Park and is monumental but soft, swaying gently in the desert breeze. The multi-layer work was created by a combination of hand-baiting and machine-loomed knotting, and was inspired by American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote: "Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience."
Renowned Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone certainly felt the magic of Nevada’s mighty Mojave when creating this public art installation, in cooperation with the Nevada Museum of Art. Seven Magic Mountains is physically and symbolically located between the natural and artificial; between the mountains and the desert, and the tarmac of the nearby I-15 highway. The seven 33-foot-high (10m) totems were constructed with local boulders and painted in various vibrant shades.
Stargazer (Citlali), by famous Mexican artist Pedro Reyes, has joined the public art collection along San Antonio’s Riverwalk. The sculpture is about 16 feet (5m) tall, and is intended to honour humanity's collective history of turning to the stars for guidance. 'Citlali' means 'star' in Nahuatl, the Indigenous language of Reyes' hometown of Mexico City. The Riverwalk is a trail that follows the San Antonio River through downtown, encompassing artworks, markets and activities. It's one of the most popular tourist attractions in Texas.
This likeness of a roadrunner, the state bird of New Mexico, was made by local artist Olin Calk and is located at the rest stop off I-10, just west of Las Cruces. The artwork is composed entirely of junk taken from the Las Cruces Recycling Center, such as mobile phones, bike components and worn shoes. At 20 feet tall (6m), it's about 10 times the height of a real-life greater roadrunner.
Standing in front of the Palm Springs Art Museum, Forever Marilyn is a giant 26-foot-tall (8m) statue of Marilyn Monroe. Created by Seward Johnson, it's a recreation of the world-famous image of Monroe's dress fluttering over a subway vent while filming Billy Wilder's 1955 production, The Seven Year Itch. According to the artist, it represents an exuberance for life without inhibition; an almost reckless sense of our own vibrancy.
This unique sculpture by quantum physicist-turned-artist Julian Voss-Andreae is found in downtown Palm Springs. Made of polished stainless steel, the statue's shifting silver hues look different depending on the angle of the viewer and of the sun. Isabelle was designed to represent Palm Springs – by day it captures the sun and colour of the Coachella Valley, by night the sparkling neon of the city's nightlife.
Husband-and-wife team Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s monumental sculptures celebrate the significance and beauty of everyday things, often making their subjects larger than life. This 40-foot-tall (12m) sculpture was inspired by the vast prairies and mountains of Colorado; a giant dustpan and brush dancing in the dusty wind. Made of stainless steel, aluminium and plastic, the sculpture sparkles every evening in the setting western sun. The work is located outside the Denver Art Museum.
Houston, Texas houses another of sculptor Claes Oldenburg’s monumental artworks. Standing 18 feet (5.5m) tall and dominating one side of the Houston Public Library, Geometric Mouse X offers a horizontal view of a mouse’s head, with a squiggly red rope dripping from its eye that looks like tears. Oldenburg, who is associated with the Pop Art movement, took a philosophical approach to his art. He once said: "Because my work is naturally non-meaningful, the meaning found in it will remain doubtful and inconsistent – which is the way it should be."
The Ant's Picnic was crafted by sculptor Steve Kimble and purchased for Pima County by an anonymous donor. Each of the seven aluminium ants weighs 27kg (60lbs) and clambers across the roof of a picnic ramada at Brandi Fenton Memorial Park. On the outskirts of the southern city of Tucson, the park, which is part of the 137-mile (220-km) Chuck Huckelberry Loop open space gallery, contains a host of other sculptures as well, including a large metal butterfly, two life-sized bronze children reading a book on a park bench and an abstract statue of a cactus.
Lao Tzu is a red steel sculpture outside Denver Central Library by limited-mobility sculptor Mark di Suvero. Di Suvero was born in China to Italian parents who were diplomats in Shanghai, and his vivid recollections of visiting the Forbidden City Imperial Palace Complex helped inspire his later art. In 1960 a construction accident in New York nearly killed him, and he spent two years in a wheelchair and still uses crutches to this day. He defied his doctor's initial expectations and has continued working on sculptures ever since.
Metaphor: The Tree of Utah stands beside the I-80 on the barren Bonneville Salt Flats west of Salt Lake City. Swedish artist, painter and architect Karl Momen created the 87-foot-high (27m) concrete tree in the 1980s and financed the project himself to bring colour and beauty to the stark, salt-strewn landscape. The six spheres at the top of the trunk are coated with rocks and minerals native to Utah.
This sculpture is found near an abandoned railway station in Rhyolite, on the Nevada side of Death Valley National Park, and is part of the Goldwell Open Air Museum that opened in 2000 after the death of Albert Szukalski. The Belgian artist was famous for sculpting so-called 'ghosts', and crafted two masterpieces in the Mojave desert in 1984 – this phantasmic cyclist and The Last Supper, a dinner scene based on Leonardo da Vinci's biblical fresco of the same name.
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The Breckenridge Troll was created by Danish artist Thomas Dambo to shine a light on the issue of recycling. The troll, named Isak Heartstone, is made entirely out of recycled materials and lurks on the Trollstigen Trail in Breckenridge. In keeping with Isak's mission, visitors are asked to leave no trace – and keep dogs on leads and stay on the trail. "If you're heading on a troll hunt," read the instructions, "leave only footprints."
Melting Gondola is an apocalyptic work by Colorado artist Chris Erickson, which was commissioned by the Aspen Skiing Company to highlight the climate crisis and how it's affecting mountain environments. The large installation sits at the top of a ski lift at 11,200 feet (3,400m) in Aspen Snowmass Ski Resort and presents a gondola the same colour as Aspen Skiing Company's real cars slowly melting into a puddle. The statue generated quite a bit of buzz when it debuted in 2021 – both online and in the small local community.
Personage and Birds, by renowned Spanish surrealist artist Joan Miro, was sculpted in 1970 and adorns the square outside the JPMorgan Chase Tower in downtown Houston. The steel and cast-bronze work represents a person with birds flying around their head; the body is a bright green, red, blue and yellow triangle made up of wide bands of metal, while three abstract shapes circle the red and yellow 'head'. It's 33 feet (10m) wide at the base and 52 feet (16m) tall – one of the largest pieces Miro ever commissioned.
Levitated Mass is by artist and sculptor Michael Heizer, the mind behind the aforementioned Nevada artwork, City. He wanted observers to see the underside of a huge stone and acquired a 340-tonne boulder for the purpose, which he then installed – with some difficulty – above a channel at the Los Angeles County Art Museum. Art lovers can stroll beneath and observe the stone suspended above. An LA Times critic described it as a dichotomy of desert landscape cut into LA's urban metropolis, contrasting the sculpture’s permanence with the fragile cityscape.
Affectionately known as the Bean, Cloud Gate is a public sculpture by British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor. The polished piece was created by using computer technology to cut 168 massive stainless-steel plates into precise shapes, which were then pieced together like a puzzle and welded shut. The 110-tonne mirrored sculpture is the centrepiece of AT&T Plaza in Millennium Park in Chicago, and today is a beloved icon of the city that features heavily in its travel brochures.