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

Smithson's Spiral Jetty film on view at Neue Nationalgalerie

We are happy to share that Robert Smithson's film Spiral Jetty (1970) is currently on view at Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Germany. This marks the first time that the recently completed high-resolution scan of Spiral Jetty has been shown in Europe. The film was digitized from the original 16mm film in 2024 by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, following the gift of this material by Holt/Smithson Foundation. 

Nancy Holt: Power Systems opens at the Wex

We are delighted to announce that Nancy Holt: Power Systems is now on view at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus Ohio. The solo exhibition features the most extensive inquiry to date into Nancy Holt's studies of systems, focusing on her interactive site-responsive sculptural installations that expose the basic technological systems found in the built environment.