A view through Holt's Sun Tunnels.

Dia Acquires "Sun Tunnels" by Nancy Holt

Holt/Smithson Foundation is pleased to announce Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1973-76) has joined Dia Art Foundation’s collection of art. In addition, Holt’s 1973 room-sized installation Holes of Light will join the collection. Both acquisitions have been facilitated by Holt/Smithson Foundation.

Sun Tunnels is a pioneering work of Land art located in the Great Basin Desert in north-western Utah. This new acquisition demonstrates Dia’s unwavering commitment to site-specific projects, which began more than forty years ago with Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977) and now includes projects around the world. This is the first permanent work of Land art to join Dia’s collection since 1999, when Nancy Holt facilitated the donation of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) to Dia.

In celebration, Dia will present an exhibition of work by Holt at Dia:Chelsea in New York, opening September 15, 2018. Holt’s work since the early 1970s was concerned with the complexities of perception-focus, light, and space. This exhibition will feature Holes of Light and Mirrors of Light (1974), which both explore the physical properties of light projected onto cylindrical forms. Holt’s work with artificial light led her to explore natural light in the landscape and, ultimately, create Sun Tunnels. The exhibition will mark the first recreation of Mirrors of Light since its original installations in 1974.

Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels (1973-76)
Great Basin Desert, Utah
Concrete, steel, earth
Overall dimensions: 9 ft. 2-1/2 in. x 86 ft. x 53 ft. (2.8 x 26.2 x 16.2 m); length on the diagonal: 86 ft. (26.2 m)
Photograph: Nancy Holt

Collection Dia Art Foundation with support from Holt/Smithson Foundation
© Holt/Smithson Foundation and Dia Art Foundation, licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

Archived News

a tropical plant in a canopy of nets

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. 

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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.