A film still from the movie Spiral Jetty. Enlarged graphic image of a sunspot.

Friday Film Screening on Sep 6—Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty"

In celebration of the upcoming livestream event From Dawn till Dusk:an online encounter between two earthworks by Robert Smithson on September 10th, we are hosting two special Friday Film screenings.

We begin on Friday September 6 with an online screening of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970), which will be available to stream online for 24 hours starting at 12pm Mountain Time (8:00pm Central European Time).

Smithson described the thirty-five-minute film as “a set of disconnections, a bramble of stabilized fragments taken from things obscure and fluid, ingredients trapped in a succession of frames, a stream of viscosities both still and moving.”  The original 16mm film of Spiral Jetty was recently re-digitized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York in partnership with Holt/Smithson Foundation; this will be the first digital screening of this beautiful new 2024 scan.

The Friday Films will be made available through Holt/Smithson Foundation’s Vimeo—the link will be made available on this page starting at 12pm Mountain Time on Friday September 6.

From Dawn till Dusk will present a special livestream conversation on Tuesday September 10 between two iconic earthworks by Robert Smithson: 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. Learn more on our website.

We will continue on Friday the 13th with Nancy Holt’s film Breaking Ground: Broken Circle/Spiral Hill (1971/2011), which combines 16mm footage Holt shot with Smithson during the construction of the earthwork with material gathered for the 40th anniversary of the earthwork in 2011 to create a portrait of Broken Circle/Spiral Hill and its unique surroundings.

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty [still] (1970)
16mm film
Color, sound
Duration: 35 minutes
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York

Archived News

large steel duct coming out of the ground and spanning large gaps with a person standing underneath

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.

an image of a book with a Smithson drawing on the cover

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.

artist Renée Green

2024 Annual Lecture—Renée Green at Utah Museum of Fine Arts

We are very happy to announce the details of the third edition our Annual Lecture Series, an initiative that invites artists, writers, and thinkers to raise questions and present research extending the creative legacies of the artists Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. Over the course of a decade, we partner with a different institution each year to host lectures in ten distinct locations, each significant to Holt and Smithson.