The Broken Kilometer, 1979

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A work of installation sculpture in a Soho anachronism--a storefront gallery space devoted to actual art.. What You'll See
Walter De Maria's "The Broken Kilometer" has been on view in Soho since 1979. The work consists of 500 round, brass rods (each measuring two meters in length and five centimeters in diameter) laid out in five parallel rows in a very large white-walled gallery. If you look closely--from behind a rope that unfortunately limits access to the first few feet of the cavernous space--you may notice that the rods are five millimeters further apart from each other the further back they go ... or you may not.

Good Art, Great Location
Since you can't interact with the work, you are left to contemplate. And though the piece itself is intriguing, inevitably you'll find yourself calculating its aesthetic value as compared to the dollar-value of a huge storefront loft space on one of Soho's most expensive blocks. Perhaps the biggest conceptual hurdle to overcome is the fact that nothing in the space is for sale.