Beuys intended the Kassel project to be the first chapter in an ongoing planting initiative that would raise ecological consciousness worldwide. Luckily for us, there is no need to hop on a flight to Kassel to see these famed oaks because Dia followed Beuys’s wishes and continued the project right here in New York City! By 1996, Dia installed a total of twenty-three trees and their columnar basalt markers on West 22nd Street between 10th and 11th Avenues. The project has since been extended throughout the world with single trees and steles planted at strategic sites, including the front of the art academy in Oslo, and at major events such as the Fifth Biennale of Sydney. 

While an interest in institutional and societal critique within the art gallery and museum characterized the first two decades of Beuys’s artistic career, in the 1970s Beuys expanded his practice into the public sphere, consolidating his philosophy outlining a social revolution through the transformative powers of art. In addition to his influential teachings and public debates, Beuys became a founding member of the Green Party whose mandate encompassed ecological and environmental issues. Beuys’s ecological emphasis in the 1970s was also paralleled by contemporary artists elsewhere, such as the American land or earth artists Walter De Maria, Robert Smithson, and Michael Heizer. Yet, compared to the gargantuan size of the projects by many of the American land artists, Beuys’s installation is rather understated – rather than announce itself as an art installation, it blends into the environment.

Over the years, Dia’s continuation of 7000 Oaks has transformed and grown with the surrounding environment. When the trees were first planted, the stones dominated the saplings, a few years later, the trees and stones were of equal height, and now, the tree dwarfs the stone next to it. As Beuys explained, “the planting of seven thousand oak trees is thus only a symbolic beginning. And such a symbolic beginning requires a marker, in this instance a basalt column. The intention of such a tree-planting event is to point to the transformation of all life, of society, and of the whole ecological system.” Both a local gesture to urban renewal and a global impetus towards ecological balance, Beuys’s 7000 Oaks exist as a testament to the passage of time and our responsibility to the environment – an awareness echoed by the High Line nearby.