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

Chapter Nine of Tuesday Texts

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

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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.

Nancy Holt's Starfire acquired by Powder Art Foundation

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Holt artworks in "All Light: Light and Space yesterday and today" at Kunsthalle Bielefeld

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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.