four steel pipes extending up from the floor with four viewing pipes pointed at four black painted circles on the wall

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

Nancy Holt’s 1972 sculpture Locators with Loci were presented  in the exhibition Minimal  at the Bourse de Commerce, Paris between October 8, 2025 and January 18, 2026. Curated by Jessica Morgan, Director of Dia Art Foundation, the exhibition traced the scope of Minimal Art through more than one hundred works by forty international artists, many drawn from the Pinault Collection.

Locators with Loci belongs to a series of sculptures Holt began in 1971, when she created her first three-dimensional works—what she called “seeing devices”—that draw attention to visual perception and place. The Locators consist of industrial piping welded into a T-shape and are designed to be viewed through with one eye, directing attention to the time-bound processes of vision. Developed directly from Holt’s experiments with photography, the Locators provide a means of locating perception itself.

The four Locators Holt uses in Locators with Loci shift in angle and distance from the wall. Each is aligned with a painted black Loci, which progresses from a perfect circle to an elongated ellipse. Although the wall-mounted shapes differ from one another, when viewed through each Locator they appear as a perfect black circle edged by a ring of light—an experience akin to seeing a full moon on a clear night or witnessing an eclipse.

Nancy Holt, Locators with Loci (1972)
Installation view: Minimal, Bourse de Commerce—Pinault Collection, Paris, France, 2025
Four steel pipes, black paint
Overall dimensions variable; Locators 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm) each
Photograph: Nicolas Brasseur/Pinault Collection
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Archived News

spiral jetty film still

Films by Holt and Smithson on view at The Museum of Modern Art

Three films by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson are currently on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in collection gallery 411 of the David Geffen Wing. This presentation focuses on Spiral Jetty (1970), Swamp (1971), and Sun Tunnels (1978). Newly restored scans of the first two works are presented as part of a collaboration between Holt/Smithson Foundation and MoMA to preserve their moving-image work.

four wooden pillars sticking out of the earth with mountains in the background

Chapter Nine of Tuesday Texts

Throughout February 2026, we are publishing the ninth 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. Developed as a tool for researchers at all stages, the Scholarly Text Program aims to publish two essays on each work, presenting differing opinions and approaches and drawing connections to topics that range from geology and ecology to poetry, architecture, public art, sculpture, drawing, film, philosophy, site, and

signage for an exhibition

"Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics" at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles

What does it mean to notice how we see? "Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics" at the MAK Center at the Schindler House in Los Angeles offers an encounter where art and architecture shape perception together. This exhibition to brings Holt’s work into a responsive dialogue with the Schindler House, inviting visitors to experience art and architecture as partners in seeing.

a short typewritten text within a circle, with Nancy Holt's signature in the bottom right corner

Nancy Holt concrete poem on show in Paris at Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles

Nancy Holt started making art in 1966, and her first works took the form of concrete poems: artworks testing the structure, content, and form of language. A key concrete poem, "The World Though a Circle," from 1972 is currently on show in the exhibition Deep Fields at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris until March 23, 2026.