Bill Dilworth, the beloved caretaker of Walter De Maria‘s New York Earth Room, has died at 70. The New York Instances reported on Saturday that he died on December 10, 2024, of a stroke, although his passing was not a matter of public data till the Instances obituary was revealed.
For 35 years, Dilworth tended to the 1977 De Maria piece, an set up composed of 280,000 kilos of grime piled two ft excessive. (Guests stand behind glass and should not allowed to stroll on the grime.) Managed by the Dia Art Foundation, the piece has been open to most of the people since 1980 and has since change into some extent of pilgrimage and a cult favourite. The pop star Lorde even featured an Earth Room lookalike in a latest music video.
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The grime in that room seems pure and stately, largely due to the behind-the-scenes labor of Dilworth, who took the job in 1989 and held it till his retirement in 2024. Previous to taking the position, he had solely seen a 1977 image of the piece—the one authorized {photograph} of it in existence. He got here to know the work intimately, spending many hours of his life sustaining it.
In a 2023 New Yorker article, for instance, Dilworth described cautious thought over how the grime was moved round. He started with a cultivator, a bit of agricultural tools with sharp disks, then switched to a rake on the recommendation of Heiner Friedrich, a Dia founder.
He additionally paid thoughts to the moistness of the earth, watering it commonly. “Simply to get it again to this moist state is gratifying to me, as a result of that is the state that I relate to, that I maintained for many years,” he instructed the New Yorker, having spent the prior two days watering the grime.
Born in 1954 in Detroit, Dilworth attended artwork college at Wayne State College, the place he met his spouse Patti, who later turned the caretaker of one other De Maria work below Dia’s aegis, The Damaged Kilometer (1979). Dilworth turned an summary painter and would proceed to color for a few years.
However he was recognized primarily for caring for websites like The New York Earth Room. Earlier than taking that job, he had additionally maintained the Church of St. Teresa, which dates again to the nineteenth century and is positioned on New York’s Decrease East Facet. His Earth Room job got here by happenstance. “I used to be with my buddy who was the constructing operations man at Dia and he had to have a look at these pipes for one thing,” Dilworth told Artsy. “Over my shoulder, I noticed the man on the desk right here and afterwards I requested my buddy Jim, ‘Does that job ever open up?’ And he stated no. Two months later, it did.”
One may anticipate a deeper understanding of The New York Earth Room after years of working inside it. But Dilworth stated in interviews that he was loath to elucidate it as a result of De Maria himself declined to take action when he was alive.
“It’s about earth, artwork, and quiet,” Dilworth instructed the New Yorker, including, “Individuals have a look at it, they usually suppose nothing’s rising, and I say, ‘Have a look at it once more, time is rising on the market.’”
