The Art Exhibit for the Anti-Instagram Age

If it’s possible to identify exactly where it begins and ends, one might say the artwork started in a simple white-stucco storefront in Quemado, New Mexico. Inside a low-ceilinged room, a stack of release waivers on a clipboard reminded guests of the risks of walking through uneven terrain, or encountering the occasional rattlesnake. Overhead, a small clock ticked by. The Lightning Field, a land-art installation by Walter De Maria completed in 1977, is a place I’d wanted to visit ever since I’d moved to the Southwest. Last month, I finally got the chance.

I’d tried twice to make a reservation the usual way. You used to have to send a handwritten letter. Now you send an email and hope it gets plucked from the pile that arrives soon after midnight on February 1, when reservations open each year. (There are always more emails than available slots.) When that didn’t work, I tried the journalist’s back door—writing to the publicist.

I hadn’t