Robert Smithson works in "The Power of Wonder" at Museum unter Tage in Bochum, Germany

Works by Robert Smithson will be included in the group exhibition The Power of Wonder: New Materialisms in Contemporary Art at Museum unter Tage in Bochum, Germany. 

Two artworks that Robert Smithson originally made during his time in Germany in 1969 will be on view in the exhibition: Mirror Displacement: Indoors (1969) and Essen Earth  and Mirrors (for Bernd and Hilla Becher) (1969).

The Power of Wonder considers artworks in which the formative forces of the material are essential in the creation of the artwork. Rather than focusing on humankind as an organizing force, the material itself exerts an active agency. Seemingly inanimate materials such as rocks lead their own independent existence. They combine with other organic and inorganic things such as plants, fungi, or humans to form temporary networks. Artworks by the following artists are included in The Power of Wonder: Ilana Halperin, Agata Ingarden, David Jablonowski, Markus Kastieß, SUPERFLEX, and Robert Smithson.

Learn more about the exhibition on our website here and on the Museum unter Tage website here.

Robert Smithson, Mirror Displacement: Indoors (Tree from Langenfeld, Germany) (1969) [destroyed]

Created for Prospect 69 at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany

Tree, mirrors

Archived News

From Dawn till Dusk 2025

We are proud to partner with Land Art Lives, in collaboration with Land Art Contemporary, Land Arts of the American West, to present the second edition of a special livestream conversation between two iconic earthworks by Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty (1970) and Broken Circle/Spiral Hill (1971). 

Chapter Eight of Tuesday Texts

We are happy to announce that throughout August we are publishing the eighth 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. 

Every Tuesday will be publishing a new essay or selecting an essay first published in 2019 on our website, which all include images selected by the author, a short bibliography, citation reference, and endnotes pointing to the author’s references.