If you’ve ever visited the ghost town of Rhyolite on the eastern edge of Death Valley National Park, you probably noticed there’s something a bit strange about this region of the desert. Adjacent to the ghost town remains is a funky and free sculpture park called the Goldwell Open Air Museum. The outdoor attraction features bizarre statues and sculptures, most notably a piece known as “The Last Supper.” Read on if you’ve ever seen these ghost-like sculptures in the desert and wondered “Why?”
Goldwell Open Air Museum is a unique outdoor attraction located near Beatty, Nevada. The destination is most well-known for its quirky collection of statues, including the most famous: Albert Szukalski's The Last Supper
Displayed in a remote area where desert landscape stretches for as far as the eye can see, The Last Supper makes for quite a strange sight. Of course, that's exactly the point - to capture your attention and make you question what's normal!
The sculptures are a life-size, ghostly interpretation of the Last Supper painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. The artwork is the creation of Albert Szukalski, a Poland-born Belgian sculptor who was known as the sculptor of “ghosts” and a “situation maker."
Szukalski came to the Nevada desert in 1984 to build what came to be his most famous and unique creation. By maintaining the original staging of Da Vinci's work and placing it in an iconic American Southwest setting, Szukalski successfully created a work that would be talked about for decades to come.
Believe it or not, Szukalski originally built The Last Supper with the belief that it would last only two years. However, it ended up sticking around for much longer than that! Nearly four decades later, The Last Supper remains the centerpiece of Goldwell Open Air Museum.
Szukalski followed up this bizarre yet strangely beautiful work with two other pieces at the site: Ghost Rider in 1984 and Desert Flower in 1989. Unfortunately, Desert Flower was destroyed in a windstorm in 2007.
Albert Szukalski passed away in Belgium in 2000. However, a large piece of him continues to live on all the way out in the Nevada desert. How amazing is that? Learn more about The Last Supper and visit Goldwell Open Air Museum's website.
