2021 Research Fellow: Paige Hirschey

We are pleased to announce our next 2021 Holt/Smithson Foundation Research Fellowship awardee: Paige Hirschey.

Paige Hirschey will focus on Nancy Holt’s 1982 work Catch Basin and related System Works. Paige is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto specializing in artists' engagements with science and technology from the Cold War to the present. She received her B.A. from the University of Colorado in 2014 and her M.Sc. in Art History, Curating and Criticism from the University of Edinburgh in 2015. She is currently at work on her doctoral dissertation, which offers a reexamination of the aesthetic theories of György Kepes and the enduring legacy of his Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT.

Our Research Fellowships aim to encourage new research on the work, ideas, and creative legacies of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. We look forward to thinking with Paige to expand and develop critical research on Nancy Holt.

Nancy Holt, Catch Basin (1982)
St. James Park, Toronto, Ontario
W: 80 ft. (24.4 m), L: 90 ft. (27.4), H: 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Collects rain water off the park slopes, channeling the water into the central basin: diameter 10 ft (3m)

©Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

Archived News

Soft Network Benefit Auction

We are pleased to participate in the Soft Network Benefit Auction, open on Artsy from September 23 until October 7, 2026. The auction brings together works in support of Soft Network and the Artist Foundations and Estate Leaders List (AFELL), an international network for artists and stewards of artists’ estates and legacies. Holt/Smithson Foundation has donated two rare works of art by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson to the auction to help further this goal. 

“Starfire” at Powder Art Foundation Fall Open Day and Utah Museum of Fine Arts Land Art Week

On October 2, from 11 am to 3 pm, Powder Art Foundation will host a Fall Open House at Powder Mountain in Eden, Utah where Nancy Holt’s Starfire (1986) can be experienced. Starfire joined the collection of Powder Art Foundation last year. The sculpture comprises eight fire pits arranged in the configuration of the Big Dipper and the North Star, bringing the sky down to earth.

Portuguese translation of Smithson's "Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction"

We are pleased to share our collaboration with the São Paulo–based Robert Smithson scholar and professor Antônio Ewbank and publisher Editora Ébria, presenting the first Portuguese translation of the text of Robert Smithson's Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction (1970). Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction is a four-part fold-out work created by Smithson for Aspen Magazine No. 8: The Fluxus Issue, guest edited by Dan Graham and designed by George Maciunas.

Nancy Holt in "10 Years LA!"

From May to August 2026, Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers presented 1 0 Years LA!,at their Los Angeles gallery, an exhibition celebrating the gallery's decade-long presence in the city.