Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Nancy Holt, Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park (1988)
Video, color, sound
Duration: 32 minutes, 24 seconds
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Video Data Bank, Chicago
Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park documents the process behind the creation of Nancy Holt's Dark Star Park, in Arlington, Virginia. The park, which features large-scale concrete spheres and pipes, allows the visitor to reconsider the experience of space, earth, and sky within an urban context. Invited to create a public sculpture, Holt expanded the invitation to create an urban park. Concrete spheres are interspersed throughout the park, visible through tunnels, reflected in pools of water, and framed in the carved-out hole of another sphere. Once a year, on August 1 at 9:30 am, the shadows of the objects exactly align with outlines on the ground. This date marks the anniversary of the land’s acquisition by William Henry Ross in 1860. Dark Star Park contemplates the physical and ideological structures of land ownership while quoting the cosmos.
Interviews with the artist, the architects, engineers, contractors, and the public, among others, reveal Dark Star Park as both a public sculpture and a functioning park that reclaims a blighted urban environment
Monument wars contesting public space. Controversies arising over renovations of Brutalist landscape design. As the custodian of a world-renowned artist-designed park now in its fourth decade, these recent developments resonate. The idea that public sculpture, parks, and plazas are subject to changing mores as manifestations of our collective identity has never been more evident.1
The making of Dark Star Park has been long and arduous. I became involved in areas of activity in which I had had limited experience, such as architectural planning, landscape design, contractors’ specifications, engineering, guniting, drainage, sidewalk construction, bureaucratic procedures, etc. Five years is a long time to sustain an art idea and work toward its realization. But during that time possibilities for other works have been evolving out of the intermediate stages, and my concern with the value of making art that is also functional and necessary in society has been reinforced. I hope the precedents established here will continue in future art projects throughout the world.
Nancy Holt
“Dark Star Park.” In Nancy Holt: Sightlines, edited by Alena J. Williams, University of California Press, 2011, pg 118-119. Originally published in a slightly different form in the brochure Dark Star Park: Rosslyn, Arlington County, Virginia: Nancy Holt, produced by Arlington County, Virginia, in 1984 on the occasion of the park’s dedication.
Holt designed Dark Star Park in concert with the development of the site as a whole, integrating landscaping and sculptural features to encompass the neighboring building and adjacent traffic island. Concrete spheres are interspersed throughout the park, visible through tunnels, reflected in pools of water, and framed in the carved-out hole of another sphere. Every year on Dark Star Park Day people gather to watch the shadow alignment.
