Holt/Smithson Foundation at the International Catalogue Raisonné Association's Annual Conference

This week our Executive Director Lisa Le Feuvre will be speaking at the International Catalogue Raisonné Association's annual conference. This year's conference is titled New Thinking About the Catalogue Raisonné and Le Feuvre will be presenting on Holt/Smithson Foundation's plans for creating a digital Atlas of Artworks for Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson.

The conference takes place this Thursday, January 9, 2025 at Mishcon de Reya, Africa House, London. Book tickets here.

Further information on New Thinking About the Catalogue Raisonné conference from ICRA is below:

Today, the field of cataloguing artworks is rapidly expanding and changing. New models continue to appear, from the Wildenstein Plattner Institute’s “Digital Corpus” to the Holt/Smithson Foundation's “Atlas”—which aims to catalogue a husband-and-wife artist pair—to the Hans Arp “Critical Survey” and Sophie Tauber-Arp online “Oeuvre Catalogue,” to the Modigliani Initiative, we are witnessing a critical expansion beyond the term “catalogue raisonné” as well as a serious rethinking of its traditional and current approaches and uses. Reconsidering the role of the single independent expert on an artist, museums are now becoming involved and partnering in cataloguing oeuvres of artists (Rothko and Louise Bourgeois Works on Paper), and, in some cases, groups of museums are joining forces for this purpose, as in the Van Gogh Worldwide Resource. Digital scanning and 3-D copies of objects, such as those by Factum Foundation, offer an alternative approach to cataloguing and documenting art. Further, the digital turn to online catalogues has democratized information but at the same time has its own sets of risks regarding website technology and sustainability. And the traditional print catalogue raisonné, such as those published by Yale University Press and Art Publishing Inc., continue to have an enduring value and has lasted for centuries. Why are some contemporary archives, estates, and living artists rethinking the catalogue raisonné’s format and purpose? Why do so few women and non-binary artists have traditional catalogues? What can we learn from non-Western approaches, such as the Benin Digital Project or cataloguing of Native American art? What legal issues arise when we rethink the catalogue raisonné as a genre and topos, and how will this in turn affect the art market?
 

Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 1969

Archived News

Portuguese translation of Smithson's "Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction"

We are pleased to share our collaboration with the São Paulo–based Robert Smithson scholar and professor Antônio Ewbank and publisher Editora Ébria, presenting the first Portuguese translation of the text of Robert Smithson's Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction (1970).

Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction is a four-part fold-out work created by Smithson for Aspen Magazine No. 8: The Fluxus Issue, guest edited by Dan Graham and designed by George Maciunas.

Nancy Holt in "10 Years LA!"

Opening May 15, Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers present in their Los Angeles gallery 10 Years LA!, an exhibition celebrating the gallery’s decade-long presence in Los Angeles. The exhibition is on show through August 8, 2026.