person kneeling beside a sculptural wall, and using tools to mark the alignment of the shadow of the sculpture

40th Anniversary Celebration of Nancy Holt's "Time Span"

We are delighted to partner with The Contemporary Austin and Austin Film Society this April to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Nancy Holt's sculpture Time Span (1981) at Laguna Gloria, in Austin, Texas. 

In Time Span Holt highlights the overlapping cycles of personal and astronomical time. Each year on April 5, the artist’s birthday, a shadow is cast by the afternoon sun through the sculpture’s steel wheel to frame a plaque on the ground inscribed with the artwork’s date of completion, also April 5. Despite the solidity of its materials, Time Span reflects change, offering variable sight lines of the surrounding landscape at different times of the day and year.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of this work we have collaborated with The Contemporary Austin and Austin Film Society to create the following program of film screenings and discussions:

Outdoor Screening of Holt Films at Laguna Gloria, Austin, TX
April 3, 2021 at 8:15pm CDT

This in-person, outdoor screening at The Contemporary Austin's Laguna Gloria Campus will feature the Nancy Holt films Sun Tunnels (1978) and The Making of Amarillo Ramp (1973/2014) as well as the collaborative film Swamp, made by Holt and Robert Smithson in 1969.

Purchase tickets for the screening and learn more about the health and safety guidelines for the event on The Contemporary Austin website.

Annual Viewing of Nancy Holt's Time Span Alignment at Laguna Gloria, Austin, TX
April 5, 2021 at 2pm CDT

Reserve tickets to witness the shadow alignment of Time Span through The Contemporary Austin website.

On Nancy Holt's Life and Art: A Conversation with DeeDee Halleck, Rachel Kushner, and Lisa Le Feuvre
April 5, 2021 at 6pm CDT
Virtual Discussion

On Nancy Holt’s birthdate, best-selling author, Rachel Kushner, interviews media activist DeeDee Halleck, Holt’s long-time collaborator and friend. With Holt/Smithson Foundation Executive Director Lisa Le Feuvre moderating, they will discuss Holt’s art, her life with Robert Smithson, Halleck’s memories of their time and work together, and the changing roles of women artists.

Register for this free Zoom event through The Contemporary Austin website.

Online Viewing of Holt and Smithson's East Coast/West Coast (1971) through Austin Film Society
April 3—10, 2021

In this improvised film, Holt assumes the role of an intellectual conceptual artist from New York while Smithson plays the stereotypical “non-conformist” from the West Coast. East Coast/West Coast (1971) will be available for online viewing the through the Austin Film Society website.

Nancy Holt working on the metal plaque in the ground that marks the completion of Time Span at 2pm on April 5, 1981. 

©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

signage for an exhibition

"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.