When you are out exploring the desert looking for old ghost towns in Nevada, you never know what you will find. Located about five miles east of Death Valley National Park and to the west of the ghost town of Rhyolite is the 7.8-acre Goldwell Open Air Museum.
The nonprofit museum was organized in 2000 after the death of Albert Szukalski, the Belgian artist that moved his studio to this area in 1984. Szukalski first created The Last Supper sculpture, which was patterned after Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper painting. After someone donated a bicycle to Szukalski, he then went on to do Ghost Rider using the same artistic technique.
The human figure sculptures were created by draping plaster-soaked burlap over live models until the plaster hardened and then the models were removed leaving the ghost-like images. To make the figures impervious to the elements, and to help add strength to the sculptures, Szukalski coated the plaster figures with fiberglass.
Over the years, other artist have added various works to the museum.
Hugo Heyrman created Lady Desert: The Venus of Nevada, which "refers back to the classical Greek sculpture while maintaining a pixilated prescence in the high tech world of the 21st century."
Dre Peeters created Icara, which "represents a female counterpoint to the Greek myth of Icarus, the boy who tried to fly to the sun with wings bound with wax." I don't know if it is true, but someone told me that Kim Kardashian was the model for Icara.
Fred Bervoets crafted Tribute to Shorty Harris, who was a legendary prospector in the area, and "his hopeful companion, a penguin, reflects the optimism of the miners' endeavor."
Sofie Siegmann originally created Sit Here! for the Lied Discovery Children's Museum in Las Vegas, but in 2007 the sculpture became part of the Goldwell Open Air Museum.
There are various other works of art located on the site, but the other objects lacked any type of descriptive narrative about the artist or his/her work.
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