Created by artist Nancy Holt, this site-specific installation is situated on 40 acres in the Great Basin Desert approximately 110 miles northwest of Salt Lake City. In 1973 Holt conceived of the artwork and the following year—with personal funds and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts—purchased the land. The installation was designed in response to the site, with the vast basin, distant mountain ranges, and expansive horizon as integral components.
Completed in 1976, the artwork consists of four 22 ton reinforced concrete cylinders arranged in an open X configuration, 86 feet long on the diagonal, measuring eighteen feet in length and nine feet and two-and-a-half inches in diameter. Holt collaborated with surveyor and engineer Harold Stiles and astrophysicist Les Fishbone to position the monumental forms to frame views of the surrounding horizon and astrological phenomena. Aligned with the angles of the sunrise and sunset during the summer solstice and winter equinox, the “tunnels” are intended to demonstrate “the ‘cyclical time’ of the solar year.”
The walls of each tunnel are perforated to correspond to the stars in four different constellations: Capricorn, Columba, Draco, and Perseus. The diameter of each varies “relative to the magnitude of the star to which they correspond.” Activated by sunlight and moonlight, they cast interior shadows, tracing the earth's movement and rotation. Large enough to walk inside, the tunnels were designed to bring “the vast space of the desert back to human scale." They are also meant to provide respite from harsh desert conditions —the only source of shade on the otherwise barren site.
In 2018 Dia Art Foundation acquired Sun Tunnels and the surrounding acreage, undertaking conservation work the following year.
