Across the white, snow-covered slope of Eden, Utah’s, Powder Mountain, eight small fires flicker to life, a stack of boulders leans sideways, and a chairlift becomes a work of contemporary art. These works by Nancy Holt, Nobuo Sekine, and E.J. Hill were installed as part of the first phase of the Powder Art Foundation’s plan to turn the Utah ski resort into a year-round outdoor art museum. The foundation, a new nonprofit funded by Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings, envisions a landscape where skiing, art, and architecture coexist.
Reed Hilderbrand, the landscape architecture office behind Storm King Art Center, is shaping the site’s master plan, while Johnston Marklee is designing a new welcome center, and Neri & Hu is designing a trailside pavilion for exhibiting more art.
The flames of Holt’s Starfire form the Big Dipper and the North Star. The piece maps the heavens onto the earth, an elemental constellation rendered in steel, fire, and snow. Holt realized the piece in collaboration with the Holt/Smithson Foundation. It echoes the alignments of her Sun Tunnels, meant to connect sky and landscape through geometric precision.
Phase of Nothingness–Stone Stack (1970–2025), a 20-foot-tall arc of rocks by the late Japanese artist Nobuo Sekine sits perched atop a mound. It balances massive stones in seemingly possible equilibrium.
E.J. Hill’s contribution, converted a ubiquitous ski structure into an object of art. It reimagines two of the resort’s lifts with a bold color scheme and sculptural interventions. A neon sign affixed to its exterior reads “At the edge of the earth lies a love song.”
Kayode Ojo’s installation makes use of the forest landscape, hanging and draping chandeliers in the treetops. …and that they hadn’t heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house… suspends 21 crystal light fixtures among the pines, creating a dreamlike convergence of wilderness and opulence.
They join Davina Semo’s pair of interactive bronze bells, installed during the 2024–25 season, along with three earlier works that predate the foundation’s launch: an on-mountain installation by Gerard & Kelly, a trailside sound piece by Susan Philipsz, and a large-scale steel sculpture by Griffin Loop.
The Powder Art Foundation also recently announced a partnership with Dia Art Foundation. Dia has stewarded Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and Holt’s Sun Tunnels, two works that defined land art’s relationship to Utah’s vast, austere landscape. The collaboration will include collection sharing and coordinated visitation programs, linking these desert monuments to the new alpine commissions.
“Dia has long been committed to the care, preservation, and presentation of ambitious site-specific artworks,” said Jessica Morgan, Dia Art Foundation’s Nathalie de Gunzburg Director. “We are pleased to work with the Powder Art Foundation as they expand the exciting cultural offerings in Utah—deepening access to the region’s extraordinary Land art legacy while nurturing a bold new generation of outdoor projects.”
When complete, Powder Mountain is set to host a network of permanent artworks integrated into ski runs, hiking trails, and forested clearings, culminating in the Neri & Hu art pavilion breaking ground in 2026. The result is meant to redefine how audiences experience art in the American West, less as a pilgrimage to remote monuments than as an ongoing encounter with the land itself.
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