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

an image of a sign saying 'sun air'

Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics at the Schindler House, 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 2," from 1972 is currently on show in the exhibition Deep Fields at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris until March 23, 2026.

a constellation of the big dipper made of fire pits

Nancy Holt's Starfire acquired by Powder Art Foundation

We are very pleased to share Nancy Holt’s 1986 sculpture "Starfire" has found a permanent home in the collection of Powder Art Foundation in Eden, Utah. Powder Art Foundation is an outdoor art museum that works closely with Dia Art Foundation. "Starfire" comprises eight pits arranged to mirror the Big Dipper constellation and the North Star. The flames create a terrestrial map of the night sky, bringing the energy of distant stars down to earth.

forthcoming

Holt artworks in "All Light: Light and Space yesterday and today" at Kunsthalle Bielefeld

Light was a constant source of fascination for Nancy Holt throughout her four decades of artmaking. Whether drawn from the stars or powered by electricity, she approached light as a phenomenon, an idea, and a material in itself. Three of her pivotal works investigating the perceptual qualities of light are featured in the exhibition "All Light: Light and Space yesterday and today" at Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany.

Robert Smithson looking at the camera from the back of a stationwagon loaded with rocks

Casting a Glance: Dancing with Smithson

In 1968 Robert Smithson declared: “A great artist can make art by simply casting a glance.” On show until January 20, "Casting a Glance: Dancing with Smithson" at Marian Goodman Gallery Los Angeles takes him at his word and invites eighteen artists to join Smithson on the floor as partners who resist, improvise, and extend the rhythm of his thinking.

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 on view 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 Minimal Arr through over a hundred works by some forty international artists.