Chapter Two of Tuesday Texts

We are delighted to announce that throughout January and February we will be publishing a second 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.

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.

Through January and February we will publish a new text every Tuesday. Each essay includes images selected by the author, a short bibliography, citation reference, and endnotes pointing to the author’s references.

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.

The second chapter of Tuesday Texts publishes the following essays:

Kelly Baum on Holt's Pine Barrens  (1975)

Rory O’Dea on Smithson's The Monuments of Passaic (1967)

Jeremy Millar on Smithson's Hotel Palenque (1969/1972)

Leigh Arnold on Smithson's Texas Overflow (1970)

Anya Novak on Smithson's Broken Circle/Spiral Hill  (1971)

Lori Zippay on Smithson and Holt's collaborative film Swamp (1971)

Sarah Hamill on Holt's 30 Below (1979)

Suzaan Boettger on Smithson's My House is a Decayed House (1962)

Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson at a diner in New York City, circa 1970.⁠
Photograph: Gianfranco Gorgoni⁠

Archived News

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 All Light: Light and Space yesterday and today, opening on Friday, November 14, 2025 at Kunsthalle Bielefeld in Germany, and on view through March 1, 2026.

Casting a Glance: Dancing with Smithson

In 1968 Robert Smithson declared: “A great artist can make art by simply casting a glance.” "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.

Holt's "Locators with Loci" on view in "Minimal" at the Bourse de Commerce

Nancy Holt's 1972 sculpture Locators with Loci is on view in the exhibition Minimal at the Bourse de Commerce, Paris on show through January 18, 2026. Curated by Jessica Morgan, Director of Dia Art Foundation, the exhibition traces the diversity of this Minimal Art since the 1960s through over a hundred works by some forty international artists, many from the Pinault Collection.