a city park with green grass and red tile channels cut into the lawn with a large metal structure over a large drain

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

Nancy Holt standing inside one of the Sun Tunnels, a large concrete cylinder in the desert

2023 Annual Lecture: Rebecca Solnit at the New Mexico Museum of Art

Holt/Smithson Foundation announces the second in the ten-year series of Annual Lectures, an initiative that invites artists, writers, and thinkers to raise questions and present research extending the creative legacies of the artists Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. Over the course of a decade, the Foundation will partner with a new institution each year to host lectures in ten distinct locations, each significant to Holt and Smithson.

Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels

Holt/Smithson Foundation is hiring!

Nancy Holt (1938-2014) and Robert Smithson (1938-73) transformed the world of art and ideas. Holt/Smithson Foundation develops their distinctive creative legacies. We are expanding our small team and seek an Administrator to join us in ensuring that our mission is fulfilled.

installation view of Nancy Holt: Locating Perception

On Nancy Holt: Rita McBride and Aurora Tang in Conversation

To mark the closing of Nancy Holt: Locating Perception, Sprüth Magers is hosting a conversation between Rita McBride and Aurora Tang at the Los Angeles gallery. Holt's work remains crucial both to an understanding of land-based and conceptual practices of the late 1960s onward, as well as to contemporary approaches to the natural and built environments. McBride and Tang, who have long engaged with related questions in their projects and exhibitions, will discuss Holt's work and their varied practices. 

a collage with an of a large crane and king kong

Research Fellowship Webinar with Margo Handwerker

Join us on Thursday December 15th for a webinar by 2022 Holt/Smithson Research Fellow, Margo Handwerker. Margo will share her research surrounding Robert Smithson's 1972 proposal for Lake Edge Crescents in Ohio.

Information and Registration:
Thursday, December 15th
10:30 AM Mountain Time
Margot will present for 30 - 45 minutes and a question and answer session will follow.
Register in advance for this webinar.