Between 1981 and 1982, New Mexico State University invited the artist Sol LeWitt, a leading figure in the development of Minimalism and Conceptual Art, to conceive and construct a large-scale sculpture as part of a dual effort to expand building projects and fund public art on campus. Delving into the University Art Museum archives, Dr. Jess Ziegenfuss discusses the process and making of the artwork titled A Square, A Circle* (1982), located in the McFie Circle Desert Sculpture Garden, and the institutional background leading up to its creation. The history of this campus collaboration demonstrates the power of public art to engage and impact communities both past and present.

Dr. Jess Ziegenfuss is Assistant Professor of Art History at Texas A&M International University and curator of Warhol & Friends. Her scholarship focuses on modern and contemporary art, visual studies, and critical theory. She is particularly interested in political ecology, environmental aesthetics, materiality, scale and spatiality, process-based art, and site-specificity.

*Full title, Sol LeWitt: A Square within Which Are Horizontal Parallel Lines, Outside the Square, Vertical Parallel lines; A Circle within Which Are Parallel Lines, Outside the Circle Are Horizontal Parallel Lines.