A man standing next to a compost heap holding a mirror beside his leg, which reflects a woman holding a camera

Robert Smithson in Europe at Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop, Germany

Robert Smithson in Europe  is on view at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop through February 22, 2026.

The exhibition brings together Robert Smithson’s artistic production across the Netherlands, Italy, Great Britain, and Germany, with particular attention to North Rhine–Westphalia, including the Rhineland and the Ruhr region surrounding Bottrop. Featuring major loans from international museums alongside works from the Foundation’s collection, the exhibition includes key projects from 1969 as well as materials related to Smithson’s 1971 earthwork Broken Circle/Spiral Hill. 

From the late 1960s onward, Smithson’s sculptures and installations engage questions of place, entropy, and the entanglements of human activity with nature, industry, and the environment. Europe was central to his practice, and he was especially drawn to the geological formations and industrial landscapes of North Rhine–Westphalia. 

Robert Smithson in Europe is developed in close collaboration with the Holt/Smithson Foundation and is curated by Markus Karstieß, artist and professor at Koblenz University of Applied Sciences, Dr. Eva Schmidt, art historian and former director of the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, and Monja Droßmann, curator of the Josef Albers Museum. Research for the exhibition was initiated by Karstieß and Schmidt during their 2021 Research Fellowship at the Foundation.

Robert Smithson constructing Mirror Displacement on a Compost Heap (1969)
For Prospect 69, Düsseldorf, Germany
Photograph: Nancy Holt
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

Archived News

spiral jetty film still

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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 short typewritten text within a circle, with Nancy Holt's signature in the bottom right corner

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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.