Our Research Fellowship Program encourages new research on the work, ideas, and creative legacies of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. Each January we make an open call for applications to this annual program.

Our Fellowship Program began in 2021. Our second Fellowship season in 2022 focuses on two topics: Earthwork Ethics and Local Narratives. Fellowships have been awarded to Rory O’Dea, whose fellowship took place in July, and to Margo Handwerker, whose Fellowship takes place in Fall 2022.

Check back to this page in December 2022 for information about our 2023 research topics.

Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson seated on chairs in their NYC loft
two figures walking through a sand quarry

Rory O'Dea

Encompassing site-studies, ethnography, and archival research at ecological and historical institutions, my fellowship project will investigate the local cultures--human and nonhuman--of the Pine Barrens, New Jersey that have been erased or are under threat of erasure by the processes of industrialization and environmental degradation.
drawing of mandala of arms spiraling out from a central red circle

Ali Karimi

Ali Ismail Karimi’s Research Fellowship will focus on Robert Smithson’s 1966 works Grave Mounds with Object and Proposal for a Monument on the Red Sea and the relationship of Smithson’s work to the landscapes of the Middle East.