In addition to the museum, the site includes the Red Barn Art Center, a 2,250-square-foot (209 m2) multi-purpose studio and exhibition space used by artists-in-residence and other artists.

The nonprofit museum was organized in 2000 after the death of Albert Szukalski, the Belgian artist who created the site's first sculptures in 1984 near the abandoned railway station in Rhyolite.

In the 1990s, Hugo Heyrman added Lady Desert: The Venus of Nevada, a cinder block sculpture in part based on the idea of the pixel.

Dre Peters created Icara a hand-carved female version of Icarus, the boy in Greek mythology who flew too close to the sun.

Other works at the site include Sofie Siegmann's Sit Here!, a couch created in 2000 for the Lied Discovery Children's Museum in Las Vegas and restored and moved to Goldwell in 2007.