Holt/Smithson Foundation at the International Gatalogue 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

Florida Friday Films

In May of 1971 Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt returned to Florida to visit the Florida Keys, with Smithson seeking potential locations for his Island Maze and Forking Island. While these hypothetical earthworks exist today solely through Smithson's drawings, on this trip Smithson did plant an earthwork he called Mangrove Ring—which is also the subject of a short film of the same name by Nancy Holt.