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.

The second Annual Lecture takes place at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe on Saturday April 1, 2023 where the keynote speaker is Rebecca Solnit. The event will start with a presentation by DesertArtLAB, and will close with a discussion between Solnit, writer and activist Lucy Lippard and Executive Director of Holt/Smithson Foundation, Lisa Le Feuvre. The event will be livestreamed. In 1995 Nancy Holt moved to Galisteo, New Mexico and Santa Fe is the home base of Holt/Smithson Foundation.

Solnit’s 2023 Holt/Smithson Foundation Annual Lecture is titled “Everything Is Connected: Nancy Holt in the Landscape of Ideas.” She will talk about Nancy Holt as an environmental artist who points the viewer toward perception of order and pattern already present in the landscape, focusing on Holt’s commitment to directing viewers toward a deep engagement with place and paying attention to her thinking in the larger contexts of her time and of ours. Solnit will contemplate Holt as a student of Buddhism, whose teachings emphasize nonseparation and nonduality; as a New Mexican living in a landscape where Indigenous worldviews have a strong presence; and as a citizen of a time in which scientists increasingly show us a world of mutuality, collaboration, and interconnection. She will also think about the weather: the climate movement recognizes interconnectedness as the necessary basis for our political decisions about energy, land, nature, and values.

Location:     

Saint Francis Auditorium at New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 West Palace Ave, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501

Schedule:         

10:50             Doors open

11:00 am      Welcome / orientation: Shannon Bay (Deputy Director of New Mexico Museum of Art)

11:10 am       DesertArtLAB presentation

11:50 am      Lisa Le Feuvre (Executive Director, Holt/Smithson Foundation) chairs discussion, with audience invited to respond

12:10 pm      Morning session closes

1:15 pm         Doors open

1:30 pm        Welcome back: Shannon Bay

1:35 pm        Rebecca Solnit presentation

2:10 pm        Lucy Lippard joins Rebecca Solnit, with Lisa Le Feuvre as chair with audience invited to respond

2:40 pm       Discussion closes

Bookings:    

Tickets are free, with booking recommended         

Livestream Links

Holt/Smithson Foundation Annual Lecture Series- Morning Session

Holt/Smithson Foundation Annual Lecture Series- Afternoon Session

https://www.youtube.com/@nmmoa

Learn more about the event and the speakers in the second Annual Lecture on this page.

Nancy Holt standing in one of the Sun Tunnels in Utah's Great Basin Desert in 1976
Photograph: Ardele Lister
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Archived News

an image of a pipeline inside a gallery

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.

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 the exhibition "All Light: Light and Space yesterday and today" at Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany.

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.” On show until January 20, "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.