Announcing the 2023 Research Fellows

We are delighted to announce our 2023 Holt/Smithson Foundation Research Fellows!

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 these four Research Fellows to expand and develop critical research on Holt and Smithson.

2023 Holt/Smithson Foundation Fellows:

Annie Dell'Aria

Annie Dell'Aria's project constructs a full narrative of Nancy Holt's Star-Crossed (1979-80), intersecting with the bureaucratic hurdles and institutional aspirations of a new museum commissioning work on a public university campus, inspiration from Indigenous earthworks of the Miami people, and practical and material challenges to realization and preservation.

Grace Storey

Grace Storey will compile a comprehensive exhibition history for Nancy Holt, from 1969–present. This research project will contribute towards Holt's catalogue raisonné.

José Luis Arroyo-Robles

José Luis Arroyo-Robles project focuses on drawing the speculative route that Nancy Holt, Robert Smithson, and Virginia Dwan may have followed during their journey in the south of Mexico in 1969.

Joy Sleeman

Joy Sleeman's research revisits Holt’s and Smithson’s travels in England and Wales between August 20 and September 30, 1969; places where they spent time, took photographs, and made other forms of art.

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Click on each Research Fellow's name to learn more about their projects and click here to learn more about our Research Fellowship Program.

Archived News

Soft Network Benefit Auction

We are pleased to participate in the Soft Network Benefit Auction, open on Artsy from September 23 until October 7, 2026. The auction brings together works in support of Soft Network and the Artist Foundations and Estate Leaders List (AFELL), an international network for artists and stewards of artists’ estates and legacies. Holt/Smithson Foundation has donated two rare works of art by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson to the auction to help further this goal. 

“Starfire” at Powder Art Foundation Fall Open Day and Utah Museum of Fine Arts Land Art Week

On October 2, from 11 am to 3 pm, Powder Art Foundation will host a Fall Open House at Powder Mountain in Eden, Utah where Nancy Holt’s Starfire (1986) can be experienced. Starfire joined the collection of Powder Art Foundation last year. The sculpture comprises eight fire pits arranged in the configuration of the Big Dipper and the North Star, bringing the sky down to earth.

Portuguese translation of Smithson's "Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction"

We are pleased to share our collaboration with the São Paulo–based Robert Smithson scholar and professor Antônio Ewbank and publisher Editora Ébria, presenting the first Portuguese translation of the text of Robert Smithson's Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction (1970). Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction is a four-part fold-out work created by Smithson for Aspen Magazine No. 8: The Fluxus Issue, guest edited by Dan Graham and designed by George Maciunas.

Nancy Holt in "10 Years LA!"

From May to August 2026, Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers presented 1 0 Years LA!,at their Los Angeles gallery, an exhibition celebrating the gallery's decade-long presence in the city.