a tree sticking out of the sand upside down on a beach

Smithson’s "Upside-down Trees" at MoCA, Krakow

In April 1969 Virginia Dwan, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson took a trip to Mexico, and made an unannounced stop in Captiva Island, Florida to see Robert Rauschenberg. Here Smithson made the second in a series of artworks titled Upside-Down Trees, which can be seen illustrated above. The first was made in Alfred, New York State, and the third in the Yucatán, Mexico.

Dwan, Holt and Smithson went on a number of trips together. On this April 1969 journey they visited Sanibel Island in Florida before Captiva Island, and travelled on to Mérida, Mexico. In September 1969, Artforum International published an illustrated narrative of this trip, titled Incidents of Mirror Travel in the Yucatán. Smithson describes how in Yucatán ‘the third upside-down tree was planted. The first is in Alfred, New York State, the second is in Captiva Island, Florida; lines drawn on a map will connect them. Are they totems of rootlessness that relate to one another? Do they mark a dizzy path from one doubtful point to another? Is this a mode of travel that does not in the least try to establish a coherent coming and going between the here and the there?’

The art historian James Meyer describes: ‘To bury a tree upside down is a violent reversal of its natural state, an upending of its vitalist associations. [. . .] On the sunny beach at Captiva the second ‘Upside-Down Tree’ announced an entropic eternity devoid of human history and organic life, an earth seethed in crystals and sheets of ice.’ [James Meyer, ‘Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery 1959-1971’. National Gallery of Art 2017]

A slide show of images relating to all three of Smithson’s Upside-Down Trees is on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow from April 26. Bringing together over seventy artworks, Nature in Art explores how human beings have exploited and attempted to master nature, addressing the question through beauty, ecology, confrontation, matter and symbollism.

Robert Smithson, Upside Down Tree II (1969)
Captiva Island, FL, USA

©Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS

Archived News

an image of a sign saying 'sun air'

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

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 2," 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

We are very pleased to share Nancy Holt’s 1986 sculpture "Starfire" has found a permanent home in the collection of Powder Art Foundation in Eden, Utah. Powder Art Foundation is an outdoor art museum that works closely with Dia Art Foundation. "Starfire" comprises eight pits arranged to mirror the Big Dipper constellation and the North Star. The flames create a terrestrial map of the night sky, bringing the energy of distant stars down to earth.

forthcoming

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

Light was a constant source of fascination for Nancy Holt throughout her four decades of artmaking. Whether drawn from the stars or powered by electricity, she approached light as a phenomenon, an idea, and a material in itself. Three of her pivotal works investigating the perceptual qualities of light are featured in the exhibition "All Light: Light and Space yesterday and today" at Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany.

Robert Smithson looking at the camera from the back of a stationwagon loaded with rocks

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.

four steel pipes extending up from the floor with four viewing pipes pointed at four black painted circles on the wall

Holt's "Locators with Loci" in "Minimal" at the Bourse de Commerce

Nancy Holt's 1972 sculpture "Locators with Loci" were on view in the exhibition "Minimal" at the Bourse de Commerce, Paris between October 8, 2025 and January 18, 2026. Curated by Jessica Morgan, Director of Dia Art Foundation, the exhibition traced the scope Minimal Arr through over a hundred works by some forty international artists.