The Lightning Field is a singular artwork: it can only be experienced in person, with reservations made months in advance and a trip to New Mexico, where caretakers leave you overnight to commune with De Maria's masterpiece and the landscape. It's a site of fascination for many, especially because it can be seen by so few. Raicovich's access to the site (she was previously the deputy director of DIA) makes her essay the rare deep engagement with the work, and allows each visit to refract the ones previous, reconsidering how memory changes her idea of the work, and opening up larger questions o...
The Lightning Field is a singular artwork: it can only be experienced in person, with reservations made months in advance and a trip to New Mexico, where caretakers leave you overnight to commune with De Maria's masterpiece and the landscape. It's a site of fascination for many, especially because it can be seen by so few.
Raicovich's access to the site (she was previously the deputy director of DIA) makes her essay the rare deep engagement with the work, and allows each visit to refract the ones previous, reconsidering how memory changes her idea of the work, and opening up larger questions of how we interact with art and memory more broadly.
At the Lightning Field takes the site as its center, but spins off into calculus, chaos theory, phenomenology, John Cage, weather, and land and conceptual art. Readers with an affection for Barthes and the personal inflection of his thinking should be fans of Raicovich.
The author's position as the head of the Queen's Museum (and her previous position at DIA) give her access to unusual resources, both in placing the book in museum stores and in reaching art world media, broadening the base of support for the book. 
