a man kicking a pile of mica and the mica is flying up in the air in front of a small wood cabin

Holt/Smithson Foundation Friday Films — "Utah Sequences" on April 3, 2020

Starting Friday April 3, Holt/Smithson Foundation invites you to join us for Fridays at the movies.

Between 3pm and 11pm Mountain Time (the time zone of our home base in New Mexico), every Friday through April and May we present a moving image work by Nancy Holt and/or Robert Smithson on Vimeo. 

Our first Friday movie presents Nancy Holt’s Utah Sequences (1970). 

This film will be publicly accessible from 3pm MT to 11pm MT on April 3, 2020.

Shot on Super 8 film, Utah Sequences shows Holt’s deep investigation of Utah’s landscape. Created six years before the completion of her landmark sculpture 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 (and our Board member) 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. Until recently thought to have been lost, Utah Sequences sheds light on Holt and Smithson’s time in Utah and invites conversations about entropy, timescales, and the human impact on the environment.

Utah Sequences is currently on loan to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah. In alignment with the state of Utah’s response to COVID-19, UMFA will remain closed through May 8, 2020. Please check UMFA’s website for details for schedules before visiting.

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

spiral jetty film still

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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

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signage for an exhibition

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

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