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.

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

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.

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

"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.