Outside the Bruce R. Thompson U.S. Courthouse in Reno, Nevada, stands Michael Heizer’s Perforated Object, a massive steel sculpture based on a tiny bighorn sheep horn artifact more than 1,500 years old.
Heizer’s father, archaeologist Robert F. Heizer, recovered the original object from Humboldt Cave in 1936 during an excavation. Archaeologists found about 90 holes drilled through it, and it was associated with the burial belongings of a person they identified as a Shoshone shaman. Its actual purpose remains unknown.
Michael Heizer later enlarged the object roughly 450 times, turning something small enough to hold in one hand into a 27-foot-long steel sculpture.
But the story isn’t simply about an ancient artifact becoming modern art.
The original came from a Native burial. That raises questions about the era’s archaeological practices, when excavators routinely removed human remains and funerary objects from Native graves for study. Native artists have since challenged both the excavation and the transformation of the burial object into public art.
That gives Perforated Object a meaning far more complicated than its appearance suggests.
It is at once archaeology, family history, public art, and a reminder that the way we treat the past can become part of the story itself.
Read more details in Perforated Object: An Ancient Mystery Reimagined in Steel.
