Goldwell Open Air Museum

The signature work is The Last Supper, created in 1984 by the Belgian artist Albert Szukalski. He draped live models in plaster-soaked fabric, let it harden, and removed the models, leaving hollow, ghostly shells arranged in the composition of the famous painting. Standing empty in the desert, glowing white against the tan hills, the figures are strange and moving, and they have weathered the decades in the open air.

Szukalski and other artists added more works over the following years: a giant pink cinder-block nude, a towering steel prospector and his penguin, a ghost rider on a bicycle, and a great mosaic-tiled sofa. Together they turned a stretch of empty land into an ever-present outdoor gallery.

Goldwell sits at the edge of Rhyolite, one of the West's classic ghost towns. Rhyolite boomed almost overnight after a gold strike in 1904, swelling to thousands of residents with a three-story bank, a stock exchange, and a famous house built of glass bottles. Within a few years the ore played out and the money vanished, and the town emptied almost as fast as it had filled.

Today its skeletal ruins, the shell of the bank, the old train depot, and the restored Bottle House, stand just up the road from the museum, so a single stop lets you wander both the art and the ghost town, two very different meditations on impermanence in the same desert.

What makes Goldwell work is its setting. The artists chose this spot precisely because it was remote and vast, where the sculptures would stand against nothing but sky, hills, and the ruins of Rhyolite. The light here is extraordinary, and the works look different at every hour, ghostly at midday, golden at dawn and dusk, and otherworldly by moonlight.

A small visitor center tells the story of the artists and sells work by contemporary makers, but the heart of the museum is simply walking among the pieces in the open, at your own pace, with the desert all around.

Goldwell stands right at the eastern gateway to Death Valley National Park, and the great trough of the valley and its bare mountains lie just to the west. The surrounding country is high Mojave desert, home to bighorn sheep in the ranges, jackrabbits and coyotes on the flats, and spring wildflowers after a wet winter.

Beatty, the nearest town, is a friendly former mining and railroad stop that serves as a base for exploring both the museum and the park.

Fall, winter, and spring are the comfortable seasons, and the low-angle light of morning and evening is best for the sculptures. Summer is punishingly hot, as it is in Death Valley next door, so a summer visit means early or late in the day and plenty of water.

Because the site is open and free, it fits easily into a Death Valley itinerary, and it is well worth timing for sunrise or sunset.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.