a large lump of asphalt and a small collection of flight arranged on a white pedastal

2021 Research Fellows: Markus Karstieß and Eva Schmidt

We are pleased to announce the final fellowship awardees in our 2021 Holt/Smithson Foundation Research Fellowship season: Markus Karstieß and Eva Schmidt.

Markus Karstieß and Eva Schmidt will collaborate on a Research Fellowship focused on Robert Smithson’s 1968 work Asphalt Lump and his related work made in the Rhine-Ruhr region of Germany. 

Markus is an artist and curator. He is Professor for Fine Art Ceramics at the Institute for Ceramic and Glass Art (IKKG), University of Applied Sciences Koblenz. Eva Schmidt is an art theorist and curator. From 2004 to 2019 she was head of the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Siegen, and previously Director of the Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst in Bremen. In 2000 Eva (with Kai Voeckler) edited of the German translation of The Writings of Robert Smithson. 

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 Markus and Eva to expand and develop critical research on Smithson.

Robert Smithson, Asphalt Lump (1968)
From Indifferent Matter: From Object to Sculpture (25 July – 20 October 2013) at the Henry Moore Institute,
Leeds
8 x 35 x 26 inches (20 x 90 x 66 cm)
Shown alongside a collection of chipped flint known as eoliths from Leeds Museums and Galleries Collection.
Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones

Image courtesy Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

Archived News

forthcoming

Holt artworks in "All Light: Light and Space yesterday and today" at Kunsthalle Bielefeld

Light was a constant source of fascination for Nancy Holt throughout her four decades of artmaking. Whether drawn from the stars or powered by electricity, she approached light as a phenomenon, an idea, and a material in itself. Three of her pivotal works investigating the perceptual qualities of light are featured in All Light: Light and Space yesterday and today, opening on Friday, November 14, 2025 at Kunsthalle Bielefeld in Germany, and on view through March 1, 2026.

Robert Smithson looking at the camera from the back of a stationwagon loaded with rocks

Casting a Glance: Dancing with Smithson

In 1968 Robert Smithson declared: “A great artist can make art by simply casting a glance.” "Casting a Glance: Dancing with Smithson" at Marian Goodman Gallery Los Angeles takes him at his word and invites eighteen artists to join Smithson on the floor as partners who resist, improvise, and extend the rhythm of his thinking.

two people looking through sculptural seeing devices at black circular shapes painted on a white wall

Holt's "Locators with Loci" on view in "Minimal" at the Bourse de Commerce

Nancy Holt's 1972 sculpture Locators with Loci is on view in the exhibition Minimal at the Bourse de Commerce, Paris on show through January 18, 2026. Curated by Jessica Morgan, Director of Dia Art Foundation, the exhibition traces the diversity of this Minimal Art since the 1960s through over a hundred works by some forty international artists, many from the Pinault Collection.