a person sitting on the ground reading with their back against a dark wall and a pile of books sitting on either side of them

Tuesday Texts Program

Holt/Smithson Foundation is committed to developing new research on the work and creative legacies of artists Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. In June we launch our on-going Scholarly Text Program, which invites thinkers to focus on a single artwork by Holt and/or Smithson.

Both Holt and Smithson opened new ways of thinking about what art might be, and where it might be found. Their ideas resonate through artistic and cultural production of the present, developing innovative ways of exploring our relationship with the planet and expanding the limits of artistic practice. The Scholarly Text Program expands these legacies by commissioning and publish new writing.

Through June and July we will publish a new text every Tuesday in our opening series of Tuesday Texts. Each essay includes images selected by the author, a short bibliography, citation reference, and endnotes pointing to the author’s references.

The single artworks range from landmark earthworks and texts to lesser known drawings, moving image works, and barely known performances. Focused as a tool for researchers at all stages, the Scholarly Text Program will publish two essays on each work, presenting differing opinions and approaches and making links to topics that range from geology to ecology, poetry, architecture, public art, sculpture, drawing, film, philosophy, site, and all the stops between.

The first Tuesday Text series publishes the following essays:

Gary Shapiro on Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty  (1970)

Barbara Miller on Nancy Holt’s Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings (1977-78)

Craig Dworkin on Robert Smithson’s A heap of Language (1966)

Joy Sleeman on Nancy Holt’s Trail Markers (1969)

Bridget Crone on Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson’s Swamp (1971)

Phyllis Tuchman on Robert Smithson’s A Nonsite (Franklin, New Jersey) (1968)

Aurora Tang on Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson’s Mono Lake (1968/2004)

Amelia Barikin on Robert Smithson’s Rocks and Mirror Square II (1971)

Marin R. Sullivan on Robert Smithson’s Cayuga Salt Mine Project (1969)

Our next Tuesday Text series will be published in Fall 2020.

Still from Nancy Holt, Bob with Books, Roof of 799 Greenwich St., New York, 1971
Color, silent
16 mm film

Archived News

Virginia Dwan at Antietam National Battlefield

Virginia Dwan (1931-2022)

At Holt/Smithson Foundation we are honored that Virginia Dwan served on our Board of Directors from 2018 until her passing on September 4, 2022. Her wisdom, humor, curiosity, warmth, attention to detail, and vast expertise has contributed immensely to our young foundation. We will miss her a great deal.

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in the snow

Holt/Smithson Foundation Joins the World Weather Network

In response to the global climate emergency, Holt/Smithson Foundation has joined twenty-seven arts organizations across the world to form the World Weather Network, a ground-breaking constellation of “weather stations” located across the world in oceans, deserts, mountains, farmland, rainforests, observatories, lighthouses, and cities.