a city park with green grass and red tile channels cut into the lawn with a large metal structure over a large drain

2021 Research Fellow: Paige Hirschey

We are pleased to announce our next 2021 Holt/Smithson Foundation Research Fellowship awardee: Paige Hirschey.

Paige Hirschey will focus on Nancy Holt’s 1982 work Catch Basin and related System Works. Paige is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto specializing in artists' engagements with science and technology from the Cold War to the present. She received her B.A. from the University of Colorado in 2014 and her M.Sc. in Art History, Curating and Criticism from the University of Edinburgh in 2015. She is currently at work on her doctoral dissertation, which offers a reexamination of the aesthetic theories of György Kepes and the enduring legacy of his Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT.

Our Research Fellowships aim to encourage new research on the work, ideas, and creative legacies of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. We look forward to thinking with Paige to expand and develop critical research on Nancy Holt.

Nancy Holt, Catch Basin (1982)
St. James Park, Toronto, Ontario
W: 80 ft. (24.4 m), L: 90 ft. (27.4), H: 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Collects rain water off the park slopes, channeling the water into the central basin: diameter 10 ft (3m)

©Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

Archived News

two figures walking through a sand quarry

Research Fellowship Webinar with Rory O'Dea

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.

Robert Smithson's Lake Edge Crescents

2022 Research Fellow: Margo Handwerker

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.

Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson seated on chairs in their NYC loft

First Annual Holt/Smithson Foundation Lecture

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.