Holt/Smithson Foundation exists to continue the creative and investigative spirit of the artists Nancy Holt (1938-2014) and Robert Smithson (1938-73).
Holt and Smithson developed innovative ways of exploring our relationship with the planet, expanding the limits of artistic practice. Through public service their Foundation engages in programs developing the artists' creative legacies, continuing the transformation they brought to the world of art and ideas.
Nancy Holt (April 5, 1938 – February 8, 2014) was a member of the earth, land, and conceptual art movements. A pioneer of site-specific installation and the moving image, Holt recalibrated the limits of art. She expanded the places where art could be found and embraced the new media of her time. Across five decades she asked questions about how we might understand our place in the world, investigating perception, systems, and place.
For over fifty years, Robert Smithson's work and ideas have influenced artists and thinkers, building the ground from which contemporary art has grown. Born in New Jersey in 1938, Smithson' early interests in cartography, geology, prehistory, philosophy, science-fiction, and language spiral through his work. From his landmark earthworks to his “quasi-minimalist” sculptures, Nonsites, writings, proposals, collages, drawings, and radical rethinking of landscape, Smithson's ideas are profoundly urgent for our times.
Smithson at the Colosseum in Rome, in 1961. This photograph was taken during Smithson's first visit to Rome when George Lester offered him his first solo international exhibition at Galleria George Lester, where he explored quasi-religious subject matter.
An exhibition poster for Robert Smithson's 1962 solo exhibition at Richard Castellane Gallery, New York, NY. This was the first of Smithson's two solo exhibitions with Castellane Gallery in 1962.
24 x 18 in. (61 x46 cm.)
Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson marry in New York on June 8, 1963. This photograph of them was taken on Christmas, 1963.
Nancy Holt visits the American West for the first time with Smithson and Michael Heizer. Shoots film Mono Lake with Smithson and Heizer at California’s Mono Lake.
Photo: Michael Heizer
Robert Rauschenberg helps Smithson drag a tree out of the water and onto the beach on Captiva Island, Florida, in order to create Smithson's Upside Down Tree II.
Nancy Holt first presents her installation work Holes of Light in a solo exhibition at the LoGiudice Gallery.
While photographing Amarillo Ramp, Smithson dies in a small airplane accident, along with pilot Gale Ray Rogers and photographer Robert E. Curtin. Richard Serra, Nancy Holt, and Tony Shafrazi complete Amarillo Ramp one month after his passing.
Holt completes construction of her most discussed work, Sun Tunnels in Utah’s Great Basin Desert.
Working with Professor Lawrence Hanson and stonemason Al Poynter among others, Holt constructs Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
Holt constructs and exhibits her first Electrical System works: Electrical System (For Thomas Edison) and Electrical System II: Bellman Circuit [pictured].
Nancy Holt moves to Galisteo, New Mexico.
Photo: Lucy Lippard, 1998
Holt completes a major earthwork in Nokia, Finland titled Up and Under.
Nancy Holt, Up and Under (1987-98)
Location: Pinsiö, Finland
Materials: sand, concrete, topsoil, grass, water
Overall surface area: 14 acres (5.7 hectares)
Mound: height ranges from 11 to 26 ft. (3.5 to 8 m), with a length of 630 ft. (192 m)
Tunnels: length 241 ft. (74 m), with a diameter of 10 ft. (3 m)
Orientation: using the North Star as true North, the tunnels are on north-south and east-west axes
© Holt/Smithson Foundation/licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York
From 2010 through 2012 the retrospective exhibition Nancy Holt: Sightlines (curated by Alena J. Williams) travels from the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University to Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, Tufts University Art Gallery in Boston, the Graham Foundation in Chicago, Santa Fe Arts Institute, and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City.
Photograph: Stephan Baumann
Join us on Thursday October 13th for a webinar by 2022 Holt/Smithson Research Fellow, Rory O'Dea.
Rory will share his research surrounding Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt's time and work in the Pine Barrens, NJ.
On October 19, 2022 the Palais de Tokyo and Lafayette Anticipations present the two-part exhibition Humpty \ Dumpty, a project by artist Cyprien Gaillard.
Bildmuseet is hosting a conference on Friday, October 7th with conversations and lectures on the work of Nancy Holt to accompany the major solo-exhibition at the museum: Nancy Holt / Inside Outside.
We are very pleased to announce the first in a ten-year series of Annual Lectures, a new Holt/Smithson Foundation program that invites artists, writers, and thinkers to extend the creative legacies of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson.
Robert Smithson's Enantiomorphic Chambers (1965) is on view in the exhibition The Double: Identity and Difference in Art since 1900 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
We are delighted to announce our second 2022 Holt/Smithson Foundation Research Fellowship awardee: Margo Handwerker.
Margo Handwerker is Chief Curator and Director of the Texas State Galleries at Texas State University. Handwerker holds a Ph.D. from the School of Architecture at Princeton University and a Masters in Art History, Theory, and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a member of M12 STUDIO, a group of artists, researchers, and writers collectively based in Big Springs, Nebraska.