City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Master's Theses City College of New York 2017 Nature Versus Culture: Lower Manhattan Land Art by Charles Simonds, Walter De Maria, and Alan Sonfist Farrar Fitzgerald CUNY City College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Follow this and additional works at: http://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses Part of the Museum Studies Commons Recommended Citation Fitzgerald, Farrar, "Nature Versus Culture: Lower Manhattan Land Art by Charles Simonds, Walter De Maria, and Alan Sonfist" (2017). CUNY Academic Works. http://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/689 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the City College of New York at CUNY Academic Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of CUNY Academic Works. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Nature Versus Culture: Lower Manhattan Land Art by Charles Simonds, Walter De Maria, and Alan Sonfist Farrar Fitzgerald Adviser: Professor Ellen Handy May 2017 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts of the City College of the City University of New York Table of Contents 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….…1 2. Ruinous Architecture, Charles Simonds’ Dwellings………..…….………………….….14 3. Displacing Culture, Walter De Maria’s New York Earth Room…………………………28 4. Too Natural, Alan Sonfist’s Time Landscape………………….………………………...41 5. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….56 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..59 Figures……………………………………………………………………………………65 i Introduction In the twilight of the postwar years’ economic boom and rapid urban transformation, three site-specific land art works were installed within blocks of each other in lower Manhattan (fig.