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 currently on show at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop in Germany, on view through February 22, 2026.

The exhibition brings together Robert Smithson’s artistic production in the Netherlands, Italy, Great Britain, and Germany, with a special focus on North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), the Rhineland and the Ruhr region local to the city of Bottrop. Robert Smithson in Europe includes significant works from international museums and from the Foundation’s collection, including the 1969 works Essen Soil and Mirrors, Chalk-Mirror Displacement, and works relating to the 1971 earthwork Broken Circle/Spiral Hill.

Smithson’s sculptures and installations from the late 1960s onwards address conditions of place, entropy and relationships between humans and nature, industry and the environment. He realized some of his most important works in Europe, and was fascinated by the NRW region’s geological and industrial heritage.

Robert Smithson in Europe is developed in close cooperation with the Foundation and 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. Karstieß and Schmidt developed research towards this project 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

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