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. We are very pleased to announce that a key concrete poem, The World Though a Circle, from 1972 is currently on show in the exhibition Deep Fields at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris until March 23, 2026.

Curated by Félicie d’Estienne d’Orves and Olivier Schefer, this exhibition brings together artists who explore deep fields ranging from distant desert landscapes to unstable, mobile fields of particles. Confronted with the unrepresentable and the invisible, the artists question perception, which is constantly referred back to its own limits, frameworks and boundaries. Deep Fields invites us to explore the territories of contemporary physics and investigate the margins of the visible, encouraging us to step outside the spaces of control. Their works are traces of events: the material and psychological echoes of horizons crossed and fields of energy in which the body remains integral. These are no longer isolated objects or static images, but rather the oscillations of fields and the magnetic and luminous vibrations of energy. 

Nancy Holt, The World Through a Circle  (1972)

Ink on paper

11 1/2 x 8 inches (27.9 x 21.6 cm)

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society

Archived News

spiral jetty film still

Films by Holt and Smithson on view at The Museum of Modern Art

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

Chapter Nine of Tuesday Texts

Throughout February 2026, we are publishing the ninth chapter of our Tuesday Text Series as part of our ongoing Scholarly Text Program, which invites thinkers to focus on a single artwork by Holt and/or Smithson. Developed as a tool for researchers at all stages, the Scholarly Text Program aims to publish two essays on each work, presenting differing opinions and approaches and drawing connections to topics that range from geology and ecology to poetry, architecture, public art, sculpture, drawing, film, philosophy, site, and

signage for an exhibition

"Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics" at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, 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 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.