Nancy Holt, Electrical Lighting for Reading Room (1985)
Installation view: Artist as Social Designer: Aspects of Public Urban Art Today, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1985
Electrical conduit, electrical wire light bulbs, chains, steel cages
16 x 24 x 12 ft. (4.88 x 7.32 x 3.66 m)

Nancy Holt's sculpture Electrical Lighting for Reading Room made of lightbulbs and conduit along three walls

Nancy Holt, Electrical Lighting for Reading Room [detail] (1985)
Installation view: Artist as Social Designer: Aspects of Public Urban Art Today, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1985
Electrical conduit, electrical wire light bulbs, chains, steel cages
16 x 24 x 12 ft. (4.88 x 7.32 x 3.66 m)

Nancy Holt, Electrical Lighting for Reading Room [detail] (1985)
Installation view: Artist as Social Designer: Aspects of Public Urban Art Today, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1985
Electrical conduit, electrical wire light bulbs, chains, steel cages
16 x 24 x 12 ft. (4.88 x 7.32 x 3.66 m)

Nancy Holt, Electrical Lighting for Reading Room (1985)
Installation view: Nancy Holt / Inside Outside, Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden, 2022
Electrical conduit, electrical wire light bulbs, chains, steel cages
16 ft. 5 in. x 24 ft. x 13 ft. 1 in. (5 x 7.32 x 4 m)
Photograph: Mikael Lundgren

Courtesy of Bildmuseet
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Nancy Holt, Electrical Lighting for Reading Room (1985)
Installation view: Ecstatic Land, Ballroom Marfa, TX, 2022
Electrical conduit, electrical wire light bulbs, chains, steel cages
16 x 24 x 12 ft. (4.88 x 7.32 x 3.66 m)
Photograph: Heather Rasmussen

A network of conduit a lightbulbs on three walls above two people sitting on stools

Nancy Holt, Electrical Lighting for Reading Room (1985)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Power Systems, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 2025
Electrical conduit, electrical wire light bulbs, chains, steel cages
16 x 24 x 12 ft. (4.88 x 7.32 x 3.66 m)

Installation view of Nancy Holt: Power Systems, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 2025

1984—2014

Electrical Lighting for Reading Room

Nancy Holt

1985

Electrical conduit, electrical wire light bulbs, chains, steel cages

16 x 24 x 12 ft. (4.88 x 7.32 x 3.66 m)

In November of 1984, Nancy Holt was invited by Earl A. Powell III, Director of Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and curator Maurice Tuchman to participate in the exhibition Artist as Social Designer: Aspects of Public Urban Art Today. The concept of this exhibition was to “document the involvement of visual artists in the area of public design traditionally reserved for architects and urban designers.” Nancy Holt created Electrical Lighting for Reading Room for the exhibition: a room-sized installation built of standard industrial materials that are part of Holt’s series of System Works. The undulating network of conduit and light engages three walls of the room, and the lower row of lights can be turned on and off by visitors pulling the chain connected to each light. The sculpture makes the visitor aware of the flow of electricity all around them and the systems in place to provide the electricity. LACMA paired Nancy Holt’s work with seating and reading table elements designed by the artist Scott Burton. Electrical Lighting for Reading Room was presented posthumously for the first time in 2022 for the exhibition Nancy Holt / Inside Outside at Bildmuseet.

Writing

Scholarly Text

A network of conduit a lightbulbs on three walls above two people sitting

“We live in a world of steel mandalas” — Nancy Holt’s "Electrical Lighting for Reading Room"

Clara Meister

A defined interior space with white walls contains an arched network of steel pipes that undulates along three walls of the room. Each connection point of the protruding network is marked by twenty standard white ceramic sockets that holds a lightbulb, protected by a metal cage. From the bottom row of ten lightbulbs dangle chains, which can be pulled to turn them on and off. Below the grid is a continuous low bench for sitting.

Writing by the Artist

large steel duct coming out of the ground and spanning large gaps with a person standing underneath

Ventilation Series

Nancy Holt

Made of the standard materials of each system – plumbing, electricity, drainage, heating, gas, and ventilation – the sculpture are functional; the electrical systems light, the heating systems heat, the drainage systems drain, the ventilation systems circulate the air, and so on. Since the sculptures are exposed fragments of vast, hidden networks, they are part of open-ended systems, part of the world. Over the years these technological systems have become necessary for our everyday existence, yet they are usually hidden behind walls or beneath the earth and relegated to the realm of the unconscious. We have trouble owning up to our almost total dependence on them.

Since the sculptures are exposed fragments of vast, hidden networks, they are part of open-ended systems, part of the world. Over the years these technological systems have become necessary for our everyday existence, yet they are usually hidden behind walls or beneath the earth and relegated to the realm of the unconscious. We have trouble owning up to our almost total dependence on them.

Nancy Holt

“Ventilation Series” (1992)

Electrical Lighting for Reading Room

Writing

“We live in a world of steel mandalas” — Nancy Holt’s "Electrical Lighting for Reading Room"

Ventilation Series

Related Info

See Also