Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels film on view in Portugal

Nancy Holt's "Sun Tunnels" film on view at Centre de Arte Oliva in São João da Madeira, Portugal

Nancy Holt's 1978 film Sun Tunnels  is currently on view in the exhibition Feixe de Luz: Escultura Projetada, Cinema Exposto at the Centro de Arte Oliva in São João da Madeira, Portugal.

The exhibition's title translates to "Light Beam: Projected Sculpture, Exposed Cinema."

From Centro de Arte Oliva:
"Devoted to the formal and conceptual relations between cinema and sculpture, Light Beam: Projected Sculpture, Exposed Cinema, unveils a century of dialogue between the two arts and a mutual process of profound transformation, which has unfolded and became more complex throughout the 20th century to the present day. Film as a document that becomes a work of art, film as a possibility of staging and rendering sculpture performative, film as a possibility of combining opposites (material/immaterial; shadow/light; volume/ projection; ephemeral/perpetual), but also sculpture as an image-producing device are aspects that run through the exhibition."

The exhibition includes artwork by Babette Mangolte, Constantin Brancusi, Fischli & Weiss, Francisco Tropa, Hollis Frampton, João Maria Gusmão, Pedro Paiva, Lis Rhodes, Mark Leckey, Mary Ellen Bute, Nancy Holt, and Susanne Themlitz.⁠

Feixe de Luz: Escultura Projetada, Cinema Exposto is curated by Andreia Magalhães. 

Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels (1978)
Installation view: Feixe de Luz: Escultura Projetada, Cinema Exposto, Centro de Arte Oliva, São João da Madeira, Portugal, 2022
16 mm film on HD video
Color, sound
Duration: 26 minutes, 31 seconds
Photograph: Dinis Santos
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York

Archived News

Nancy Holt standing inside one of the Sun Tunnels, a large concrete cylinder in the desert

2023 Annual Lecture: Rebecca Solnit at the New Mexico Museum of Art

Holt/Smithson Foundation announces the second in the ten-year series of Annual Lectures, an initiative that invites artists, writers, and thinkers to raise questions and present research extending the creative legacies of the artists Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. Over the course of a decade, the Foundation will partner with a new institution each year to host lectures in ten distinct locations, each significant to Holt and Smithson.

Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels

Holt/Smithson Foundation is hiring!

Nancy Holt (1938-2014) and Robert Smithson (1938-73) transformed the world of art and ideas. Holt/Smithson Foundation develops their distinctive creative legacies. We are expanding our small team and seek an Administrator to join us in ensuring that our mission is fulfilled.

installation view of Nancy Holt: Locating Perception

On Nancy Holt: Rita McBride and Aurora Tang in Conversation

To mark the closing of Nancy Holt: Locating Perception, Sprüth Magers is hosting a conversation between Rita McBride and Aurora Tang at the Los Angeles gallery. Holt's work remains crucial both to an understanding of land-based and conceptual practices of the late 1960s onward, as well as to contemporary approaches to the natural and built environments. McBride and Tang, who have long engaged with related questions in their projects and exhibitions, will discuss Holt's work and their varied practices. 

a collage with an of a large crane and king kong

Research Fellowship Webinar with Margo Handwerker

Join us on Thursday December 15th for a webinar by 2022 Holt/Smithson Research Fellow, Margo Handwerker. Margo will share her research surrounding Robert Smithson's 1972 proposal for Lake Edge Crescents in Ohio.

Information and Registration:
Thursday, December 15th
10:30 AM Mountain Time
Margot will present for 30 - 45 minutes and a question and answer session will follow.
Register in advance for this webinar.