Quite honestly, even as a woman dealer, I really wasn't interested in masculinity or femininity as such. What was important to me was the value of the work itself. If a woman had come along, somebody like Lee Bontecou or Louise Nevelson, and said, "I'm working on the land," I would have gone to see it.
Virginia DwanPeople 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.
Virginia DwanThere's a definite connection in terms of objects at hand - dealing with objects or material at hand. Pop art was very much enamored with popular imagery, and popular imagery was of course available and at hand. And land art was also using what was at hand.
Virginia DwanI didn't know Michael Heizer until I was preparing for my "Earthworks" show in 1968, and somebody called and told me to look at his work. Heizer had already made land art before any of the others and was deeply into it. But he was very young and working out West, so I wasn't aware of his work until he came and showed it to me.
Virginia DwanI enjoyed cross-country road trips. And I found the work challenging because it was art that existed on the land rather than mere concepts in a gallery or photographic documentation, or any of the paraphernalia that can be used to indicate that. The art was on the land.
Virginia DwanI think Michael Heizer and Walter De Maria had a love-hate relationship because they both had a lot in common. But inevitably one would get more publicity than another. Of course, Robert Smithson's gotten so much attention through the years. One of the reasons is not only that his work is quite wonderful, but the fact that he was a writer himself.
Virginia Dwan