an image of a sign saying 'sun air'

Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles

We are pleased to share details of the forthcoming exhibition Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House in Los Angeles. It launches February 25, 2026 and is on show through May 24, 2026.

Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics brings Holt’s study of perception into a close conversation with the Schindler House. In this exhibition light, sound, language, and movement meet as systems for organizing perception. 

Across five decades,  Holt  developed a body of work concerned with how we locate ourselves physically and perceptually within space. She consistently returned to questions of orientation: how attention is guided, how environments are read, and how perception is shaped by context. R.M. Schindler’s Kings Road House (1921-22), with its pinwheel plan, constructed of slab-tilt concrete and conceived to integrate interior and exterior space, is a setting that resonates with these concerns.

At the center of the exhibition is the 1972 photographic poem California Sun Signs, which gathers the word “sun” as it appears across California’s commercial and infrastructural landscape. The exhibition also features Holt’s U.S. 80 SOLO (1976-79), a spoken word piece that she described as a poem in place, works related to her landmark Sun Tunnels project from the mid-1970s, and key photographic works from the late 1960s, including Concrete Poem (1968). Together, they invite visitors to slow down, to listen, and to notice how perception itself unfolds through space.

This exhibition is presented in partnership with Sprüth Magers and Holt/Smithson Foundation. It is curated by our Executive Director, Lisa Le Feuvre, and Executive Director of the MAK Center, Beth Stryker.

Nancy Holt, California Sun Signs (1972; detail)

One of a photo-series of nineteen inkjet prints on archival rag paper, made by the artist in 2012 from original 126 format transparencies. 

© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

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

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," 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.