six circular pools of water on the shore alongside a river

2021 Research Fellow: Scout Hutchinson

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

Scout Hutchinson is a recent graduate of the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU, where she earned an MA in Art History. She has provided curatorial support to art institutions including deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Massachusetts; the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College; the Jewish Museum in New York; and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum at the University of Oklahoma, where she is currently a Mellon Curatorial Intern.

Scout’s Fellowship will expand on her Master’s thesis “Occupying Space: Land Art and the Red Power Movement, c. 1965–78,” focusing on Nancy Holt’s 1974 work Hydra’s Head.

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 Scout to expand and develop critical research on Nancy Holt.

Nancy Holt, Hydra’s Head (1974)
Along the Niagara River, Artpark, Lewiston, New York, USA
Concrete, earth, water
Overall dimensions: 28 x 62 ft. (8.5 x 18.9 m)
Pool Diameters: two 4 ft. (1.2 m), three 3 ft. (.9 m) , one 2 ft. (.6 m)
Pool Depth: 3 ft. (.9 m)

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

Archived News

spiral jetty film still

Films by Holt and Smithson on view at The Museum of Modern Art

Three films by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson are currently on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in collection gallery 411 of the David Geffen Wing. This presentation focuses on Spiral Jetty (1970), Swamp (1971), and Sun Tunnels (1978). Newly restored scans of the first two works are presented as part of a collaboration between Holt/Smithson Foundation and MoMA to preserve their moving-image work.

four wooden pillars sticking out of the earth with mountains in the background

Chapter Nine of Tuesday Texts

Throughout February 2026, we are publishing the ninth chapter of our Tuesday Text Series as part of our ongoing Scholarly Text Program, which invites thinkers to focus on a single artwork by Holt and/or Smithson. Developed as a tool for researchers at all stages, the Scholarly Text Program aims to publish two essays on each work, presenting differing opinions and approaches and drawing connections to topics that range from geology and ecology to poetry, architecture, public art, sculpture, drawing, film, philosophy, site, and

an image of a sign saying 'sun air'

"Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics" at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles

What does it mean to notice how we see? "Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics" at the MAK Center at the Schindler House in Los Angeles offers an encounter where art and architecture shape perception together. This exhibition to brings Holt’s work into a responsive dialogue with the Schindler House, inviting visitors to experience art and architecture as partners in seeing.

a short typewritten text within a circle, with Nancy Holt's signature in the bottom right corner

Nancy Holt concrete poem on show in Paris at Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles

Nancy Holt started making art in 1966, and her first works took the form of concrete poems: artworks testing the structure, content, and form of language. A key concrete poem, "The World Though a Circle," from 1972 is currently on show in the exhibition Deep Fields at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris until March 23, 2026.

a constellation of the big dipper made of fire pits

Nancy Holt's Starfire acquired by Powder Art Foundation

We are very pleased to share Nancy Holt’s 1986 sculpture "Starfire" has found a permanent home in the collection of Powder Art Foundation in Eden, Utah. Powder Art Foundation is an outdoor art museum that works closely with Dia Art Foundation. "Starfire" comprises eight pits arranged to mirror the Big Dipper constellation and the North Star. The flames create a terrestrial map of the night sky, bringing the energy of distant stars down to earth.