Chapter Seven of Tuesday Texts

We are happy to announce that throughout October we are publishing a seventh 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. 

Every Tuesday we will publish a text to our website that includes images selected by the author, a short bibliography, citation reference, and endnotes pointing to the author’s references.

Both Holt and Smithson opened new ways of thinking about what art might be, and where it might be found. Their ideas resonate through artistic and cultural production of the present, developing innovative ways of exploring our relationship with the planet and expanding the limits of artistic practice. The Scholarly Text Program expands these legacies by commissioning and publishing new writing.

The single artworks range from landmark earthworks and texts to lesser known drawings, moving image works, and rarely seen two-dimensional works. Focused as a tool for researchers at all stages, the Scholarly Text Program will publish two essays on each work, presenting differing opinions and approaches and making links to topics that range from geology to ecology, poetry, architecture, public art, sculpture, drawing, film, philosophy, site, and all the stops between.

Chapter Seven of Tuesday Texts publishes the following essays:

Mariana Cánepa Luna, "Nancy Holt’s Ventilation System (1985–1992)"

Max Andrews, "Frequent Flyers: Robert Smithson’s 'Aerial Art,' 1969"

Grace Storey, "Nancy Holt, Sole Source, 1983"

Clara Meister, "'We live in a world of steel mandalas'—Nancy Holt’s Electrical Lighting for Reading Room"

Click on the following links to read the essays in previous Chapters of our Tuesday Text series:

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Archived News

Florida Friday Films

In May of 1971 Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt returned to Florida to visit the Florida Keys, with Smithson seeking potential locations for his Island Maze and Forking Island. While these hypothetical earthworks exist today solely through Smithson's drawings, on this trip Smithson did plant an earthwork he called Mangrove Ring—which is also the subject of a short film of the same name by Nancy Holt. 

Letters and early drawings by Robert Smithson published in Centre Pompidou journal

The Fall issue of the Centre Pompidou journal Les cahiers du musée national d’art moderne publishes for the very first time Robert Smithson’s letters and writings from Rome, accompanied by previously unpublished early drawings.

The French language publication includes translations of letters Smithson wrote to Nancy Holt in 1959-1961 and letters Smithson sent to George Lester between 1960 and 1963. George Lester offered Smithson his first solo international exhibition at Galleria George Lester in Rome in 1961.