the artist Susan Philipsz standing in a wooded landscape

Susan Philipsz is the speaker for the 2025 Annual Lecture

Susan Philipsz was the speaker for the Holt/Smithson Foundation Annual Lecture. The fourth event in the series took place on Saturday, October 11, 2025, at the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo in the Netherlands.

Philipsz is a Berlin-based artist whose internationally exhibited work explores the psychological and spatial dimensions of sound, often through recordings of her own voice that activate sites and invite reflection on memory and place. She was awarded the Turner Prize in 2010—the first sound artist to receive the honor—and has presented major projects at institutions worldwide, including documenta 13.

The ten-year Annual Lecture Series invites artists, writers, and thinkers to present research and ideas that extend the creative legacies of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. Each year, the Foundation partners with a different institution to host a lecture in a location of particular significance to Holt and Smithson.

The 2025 lecture marked the first time the series was held outside the United States and was developed in partnership with Land Art Lives,  the foremost European research program on Land Art in Europe. The Kröller-Müller Museum is the closest national art institution to Smithson’s 1971 earthwork Broken Circle/Spiral Hill , his most significant outdoor sculpture.

In her lecture, Philipsz reflected on Nancy Holt’s influence on her artistic practice and thinking, followed by a conversation with Lisa Le Feuvre, the Foundation’s Executive Director. A recording of the lecture can be watched on our website.

Portrait: Susan Philipsz, 2025

Photo: Jonathan James Wilson

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