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

Annual Lecture Series

Holt/Smithson Foundation Annual Lecture Series is a ten-year program that invites artists, writers, and thinkers to extend the creative legacies of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson.

Over a course of the next decade, the Foundation will partner with a new institution each year to host lectures in ten distinct locations, each significant to Holt and Smithson. 

Golden dawn through a Sun TUnnel.

2022 Annual Lecture

Anne M. Wagner at the Whitney Museum of American Art

The Holt/Smithson Foundation Annual Lecture Series launches on November 3, 2022, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

The first speaker will be the esteemed sculpture scholar Anne M. Wagner. The title of her lecture is "Measures of Distance: Space and Sign in the Work of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson and Holt."
Tickets are available via the website of the Whitney, and the lecture will be live-streamed.

New York City was an important location for Holt and Smithson; from 1963 they lived together in the West Village in New York City, just a few blocks from the Whitney.

two people site at a diner table looking forward, one smokes a cigarette. black and white.

2023 Annual Lecture

Rebecca Solnit at the New Mexico Museum of Art

In April 2023, the New Mexico Museum of Art will host the second Annual Lecture, inviting the writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit to think on Holt and Smithson.  

New Mexico was a meaningful location for Nancy Holt, where she lived in the small town of Galisteo from 1995.

black and white image of man on left with his hand outstretched gesturing and a woman on the right looking toward the direction he is pointing

2024 Annual Lecture

Utah Museum of Fine Arts 

The third Annual Lecture will take place at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA), Salt Lake City in 2023, and the further eight lectures in this roaming series will continue through to 2032.

Utah is the location of Holt and Smithson's landmark earthworks Sun Tunnels (1973-76) and Spiral Jetty (1970).