From Dawn till Dusk on September 10

We are proud to present a special livestream conversation between two iconic earthworks by Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty (1970) and Broken Circle/Spiral Hill (1971). 

Broadcasting live from first light at Spiral Jetty, located  at the Great Salt Lake in the state of Utah, and concluding with last light at Broken Circle/Spiral Hill located in Emmen in Netherlands, this special digital event is a part of Land Art Lives, an on-going research project and upcoming international conference in the Netherlands on October 3, 2024, exploring the relevance of land art for our current times.

Link to livestream page.

Presented in collaboration with Kunstmuseum M. (Netherlands), Land Art Contemporary (Netherlands), Land Arts of the American West (Texas Tech University), and Holt/Smithson Foundation (New Mexico), the livestream will be available on September 10 through the Land Art Lives website.

In 1970 the artist Robert Smithson (1938-1973) created Spiral Jetty on the Rozel Point peninsula on the northeastern shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Made from over six thousand tons of black basalt rocks and earth collected from the site, Spiral Jetty stretches 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide in a counterclockwise spiral. The following year Smithson was invited to create an earthwork in the Netherlands for the recurring outdoor exhibition Sonsbeek. Beside a working sand quarry in the province of Drenthe and cut into the side of a terminal moraine, Smithson created Broken Circle/Spiral Hill—his only extant earthwork outside of the United States. On September 10, a dialog will take place between the two sites via a simultaneous livestream broadcast that will begin with first light at Spiral Jetty in Utah and extend to last light at Broken Circle/Spiral Hill in the Netherlands.

Throughout the seven-hour program the livestream view of the two earthworks will be accompanied by an evolving program, highlighting a myriad of voices and viewpoints. Students from the Land Arts of the American West program will be on site with Spiral Jetty. Smithson’s writings relating to the two earthworks will be read aloud and later these voices will be joined by a recording from the musician Lee Ranaldo’s audio diary of trying to find Broken Circle/Spiral Hill while on tour with Sonic Youth in the Netherlands. The artist Tacita Dean will join the conversation from Emmen to share her impressions upon her first visit to Smithson’s Broken Circle/Spiral Hill and Spiral Jetty. At 11:00 am Mountain Time (7:00pm Central European Time), Tacita Dean and Chris Taylor, Director of Land Arts of the American West, will be in conversation with Lisa Le Feuvre, Executive Director of Holt/Smithson Foundation, to discuss questions surrounding the relevance of land art today.
 

Event details:
September 10, 2024
2:00pm–9:00pm (Central European Time) // 6:00am–1:00pm (Mountain Time) 
Accessible via the Land Arts Lives website

Learn more about From Dawn till Dusk on our Programs Page.

Archived News

Smithson's Spiral Jetty film on view at Neue Nationalgalerie

We are happy to share that Robert Smithson's film Spiral Jetty (1970) is currently on view at Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Germany. This marks the first time that the recently completed high-resolution scan of Spiral Jetty has been shown in Europe. The film was digitized from the original 16mm film in 2024 by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, following the gift of this material by Holt/Smithson Foundation. 

Nancy Holt: Power Systems opens at the Wex

We are delighted to announce that Nancy Holt: Power Systems is now on view at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus Ohio. The solo exhibition features the most extensive inquiry to date into Nancy Holt's studies of systems, focusing on her interactive site-responsive sculptural installations that expose the basic technological systems found in the built environment.