Holt’s film ‘Utah Sequences’ at UMFA

Utah Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah  (UMFA) presents the first showing of Nancy Holt’s film Utah Sequences (1970), launching February 14, 2020. Please check UMFA’s websites for details for schedules before visiting.

Shot on Super 8 film, Utah Sequences shows Holt’s deep investigation of Utah’s landscape. Created six years before the completion of Sun Tunnels (1973–76), Holt’s earthwork situated in Utah’s west desert, this film explores the manmade and natural environment at Rozel Point on the north arm of Great Salt Lake. The film captures wood cabins, an amphibious vehicle, and remnants of oil drilling that have largely disappeared from the site today. By contrast, the tar-seeps and salt-encrusted pelicans so present in this film remain a constant at the site.

Holt’s film shows the artist Robert Smithson, the gallerist Virginia Dwan, the photographer Gianfranco Gorgoni, and one yet-to-be-identified-person as they prepare for the construction of Smithson’s iconic earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970), a giant coil of black basalt rocks that juts into Great Salt Lake at Rozel Point. The film contains a section Holt refers to as ‘Mica Spread’ (seen above) where Smithson empties bags of mica, a mineral often used as an insulator, found at an abandoned cabin. Fifty years after Smithson built Spiral JettyUtah Sequences sheds light on Holt and Smithson’s time in Utah and invites conversations about entropy, timescales, and the human impact on the environment.

At Holt/Smithson Foundation we are led by research. During this presentation, which shows though to August 2, 2020, we will work with researchers to learn more about this remarkable film.

Nancy Holt, Utah Sequences [still] (1970)
Super 8 film
Color, silent
Duration: 9 minutes, 26 seconds

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Archived News

Nancy Holt: Circles of Light at Gropius Bau, Berlin

Holt/Smithson Foundation and Gropius Bau are pleased to announce the most comprehensive presentation of Nancy Holt in Germany to date. Taking a journey through Holt’s output, starting with her first artwork made in 1966, Circles of Light expands over the Gropius Bau’s ground floor and atrium. Paying attention to Holt’s experimental approach to the interplay between the immaterial and the material, this exhibition underscores the singularity of Holt’s oeuvre.

Chapter Six of Tuesday Texts

We are happy to announce that throughout January we will be publishing a sixth 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. This chapter of Tuesday Texts will focus on artworks by Robert 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.