Background

Created by sculptor Harvey Fite in 1978, Opus 40 is an earthwork sculpture located in Saugerties, New York, encompassing 6.5 acres of intricately laid bluestone structures within a 63-acre landscape of meadows, forests, and (bluestone) quarries. It is considered both finished and unfinished. As in it never was built out to his full vision, but no significant progress has been made, and most funds are put towards restoration and preservation.

Harvey Fite was an American sculptor and a founding faculty member of Bard College's fine arts program. Initially trained in law and theology, Fite's passion for the arts led him to a career in sculpture. His experience restoring Mayan ruins in Honduras profoundly influenced his artistic direction, particularly the use of dry-stone construction techniques. In 1938, Fite purchased a 12-acre parcel of woodland surrounding an abandoned bluestone quarry in nearby High Woods, Saugerties for $376.25, with $25 as a downpayment. In what others viewed as a pile of rubble, Fite saw an abundant source of wood and stone for carving. He started to build his house on the eastern lip of the quarry the following year in 1939 using hundred-year-old beams and lumber from a barn he dismantled and trucked up from Princeton, NJ.

Later in 1939, Fite started clearing the rubble and overgrowth from his quarry. Adapting the Mayan stone building techniques, he began to create a structure which utilized the properties of the stone, following the contours of the quarry, echoing the structure of its mountain backdrop, and working toward the realization of his plan for a large outdoor sculpture gallery. He began with a central ramp which rose out of the quarry floor, and expanded it first to the north, then to the south. In the center, he created a swirled terrace upon which he mounted his first carved statue.

In 1945 the first known article on Fite’s creation was in an 1945 issue of Hue & Cry:

“Summer and winter the project of the bluestone Acropolis goes forward. Thus far, only a single acre has been retrieved from chaos; in his mind Fite carries blueprints for the development of the remaining eleven acres. It is really a frightening undertaking. With the plan still in its infancy, Fite has been accused of trying to emulate Pharoah and his ten thousand slaves in one lifetime. But this young sculptor, just 40, has no touch of megalomania. He is well aware that the endurance of one man may be insufficient to complete the work, and is looking for other young men to assist him in his task of exploiting bluestone’s loveliness. Part time helpers from Bard College occasionally lend a hand.”

In 1968 the public are allowed onto the grounds for a single day as part of a benefit for a local theater. And in 1976 Harvey Fite died at 72 in a fall into his quarry sculpture when his tractor mower malfunctioned while he was cutting the grass by the pool near its southern edge. His wife Barbara was away. And in 1978 she founded Opus 40, Incorporated as a 501 (c)3 nonprofit. She formed a volunteer board comprised of family and friends to help steer Opus 40 into a new era, established the Friends of Opus 40, a membership group to help meet the institution’s financial needs, and for the first time created a season of scheduled openings to the public of Harvey Fite’s extraordinary masterpiece.