Richard Long Installation at the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, United States

22 August 2025

Richard Long’s Slate Atlantic (2003) has been permanently installed on the Speed Art Museum campus as part of its new Art Park, opening 1 October 2025. The work was gifted to the museum by the late Al and Mary Shands.

Richard Long mediates on his experience of places, from mountains through to deserts, shorelines, grasslands, rivers and snowscapes, according to archetypal geometric marks and shapes, made by his footsteps alone or gathered from the materials of the place. Through this medium of walking, time, space and distance becomes new subjects for his art.

In the artist's words: "I like the fact that all stones are different, in the same way as fingerprints or snowflakes, so no two circles can be alike. In a landscape the stones are of the place and remain there."

Find out more via the Speed Art Museum.

Image: Richard Long (English, born 1945), Slate Atlantic, 2003. Delabole slate, 4 x 197 x 394 inches. Collection of Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY. The Mary Norton Shands and Alfred R. Shands III Collection Bequest 2024.10.79. Photo by Hannah McAulay.