Powder Art Foundation’s New Sculpture Park Turns Ski Runs Into Art Galleries

Imagine you are skiing down a mountainside. You turn a corner, and a copse strung with crystal chandeliers catches your eye. In the winter light, the trees shimmer like the icicles accumulating among both the real and plastic branches. They’re actually a fine art piece by Kayode Ojo, who named the work ...and that they hadn’t heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house…, an homage to The Virgin Suicides. Ojo says author Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel wasn’t the only reference. “I also was thinking about Big Foot,” he tells W. “What if she threw her diamond strands down the mountain? Wouldn’t they get caught in the trees?”

This dichotomy describes both the magic of Ojo’s work and the delightfully unlikely commissioner of this project: Powder Art Foundation, a new kind of sculpture park evolving on the slopes of a historically insider ski mountain in Utah. Founded by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, PAF’s mission is to activate 140,000 mountainous acres with moments of wonder—with the help of artists, both living and dead. There are ambitious new artist commissions and exhumations of unrealized works by late greats at PAF. Ojo numbers among the former, joining artists like EJ Hill and James Turrell in helping define a new chapter of site-responsive art.

Ojo, who didn’t grow up skiing, describes the process of working with PAF as almost dreamlike. Unlike the institutions and white cubes he normally shows in, the site Ojo selected—a grove of trees—felt impossibly remote. “There is something about the place,” he says. “You can’t capture it all in one photo. It is an experience.”

The element of surprise and the beauty of the maze are specifically exciting qualities for PAF when it comes to being a site for art. The landscape is so vast that works can be totally hidden until a new vantage reveals them. This movement through the space is something EJ Hill thought about when ideating on his work Surrendered (Total Ascent), which takes the form of a functioning ski lift with a white flag waving on top. In the snow, the white flag won’t be visible until the visitor is almost at the top, where its flapping form will remind them of the surrender they are about to offer the mountain—or perhaps the peace they may find at the top. Or both.

Each year, PAF unveils only a handful of projects—there is no mandate to fill the mountain, only to stud its contours with thoughtful interventions. Their approach to patronage is measured and patient. As Hill put it, he tends “to work a little more methodically and slower,” a rhythm that aligns naturally with a place “relegated to very specific seasons and… certain conditions.” If an idea can’t be tested one winter, “then we kind of have to wait until the next”—an approach he says feels counter to the culture of false urgency elsewhere. For him, “having to slow down and work on a decelerated pace is not only more comfortable… but maybe the whole point of taking an excursion to the mountains… to have a sort of leisurely moment, to… unwind and ski down a mountain.”

This longer timescale also trickles down into the way PAF considers its duties as a patron. What sets Powder Art Foundation apart is its promise to take care of artists and their works afterward. There are regional examples to look up to: Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, both looked after by Dia, which has pledged to work collaboratively with PAF on continually redefining the best practices for outdoor interventions. This will ensure that these ambitious multiyear projects get the lifespans they deserve.

A combination of long-term responsibility, significant resources, and patience creates a unique opportunity for artists to develop something pivotal. In a media landscape constantly questioning what the next generation of patronage might look like, PAF stands out as an intriguing proposition for how to bring new people into the chat.