images of a artwork formed of language

Portuguese translation of Smithson's "Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction"

We are pleased to share our collaboration with the São Paulo–based Robert Smithson scholar and professor Antônio Ewbank and publisher Editora Ébria, presenting the first Portuguese translation of the text of Robert Smithson's Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction (1970).

Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction is a four-part fold-out work created by Smithson for Aspen Magazine No. 8: The Fluxus Issue, guest edited by Dan Graham and designed by George Maciunas.

Organized as a sequence of sedimentary layers, the work moves from recent eras into the deep past, combining scientific imagery with speculative narrative. The layers descend through geological periods from the Cretaceous to the Precambrian.

Here, Smithson treats the printed page as a form of geology: a series of "paper strata" where images and texts accumulate like sediments. Blurring distinctions between documentation and invention, Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction reflects Smithson's enduring interest in entropy, natural history, and the ways knowledge of the earth is constructed through representation.

Robert Smithson, Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction (1970)

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

2026 Portuguese translation

Archived News

a notebook showing calculations for Sun Tunnels

Nancy Holt’s Project Files Digitized at the Archives of American Art

The papers of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson are held at the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art. This series documents more than 50 projects developed by Holt from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, offering insights into her working processes and the development of her ideas from initial conception through to completion.

poster for Smithson's film Spiral Jetty 1970 cropped

Soft Network Benefit Auction

We are pleased to participate in the Soft Network Benefit Auction, open on Artsy from September 23 until October 7, 2026. The auction brings together works in support of Soft Network and the Artist Foundations and Estate Leaders List (AFELL), an international network for artists and stewards of artists’ estates and legacies. Holt/Smithson Foundation has donated two rare works of art by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson to the auction to help further this goal.