Robert Smithson's Dead Tree in a white gallery space

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Two artworks that Robert Smithson originally made during his time in Germany in 1969 will be on view in the exhibition: Mirror Displacement: Indoors (1969) and Essen Earth  and Mirrors (for Bernd and Hilla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

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

an image of a sign saying 'sun air'

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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.

a constellation of the big dipper made of fire pits

Nancy Holt's Starfire acquired by Powder Art Foundation

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