Site-specific art is
artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork. The actual term was promoted and refined by Californian artist
Robert Irwin, but it was actually first used in the mid-1970s by young sculptors, such as
Patricia Johanson,
Dennis Oppenheim, and
Athena Tacha, who had started executing public commissions for large urban sites (see
Peter Frank, “Site Sculpture”, Art News, Oct. 1975). Site specific environmental art was first described as a movement by architectural critic Catherine Howett (“New Directions in Environmental Art,” Landscape Architecture, Jan. 1977) and art critic
Lucy Lippard (“Art Outdoors, In and Out of the Public Domain,” Studio International, March–April 1977).