a person sitting on the ground reading with their back against a dark wall and a pile of books sitting on either side of them

Tuesday Texts Program

Holt/Smithson Foundation is committed to developing new research on the work and creative legacies of artists Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. In June we launch our on-going Scholarly Text Program, which invites thinkers to focus on a single artwork by Holt and/or Smithson.

Both Holt and Smithson opened new ways of thinking about what art might be, and where it might be found. Their ideas resonate through artistic and cultural production of the present, developing innovative ways of exploring our relationship with the planet and expanding the limits of artistic practice. The Scholarly Text Program expands these legacies by commissioning and publish new writing.

Through June and July we will publish a new text every Tuesday in our opening series of Tuesday Texts. Each essay includes images selected by the author, a short bibliography, citation reference, and endnotes pointing to the author’s references.

The single artworks range from landmark earthworks and texts to lesser known drawings, moving image works, and barely known performances. Focused as a tool for researchers at all stages, the Scholarly Text Program will publish two essays on each work, presenting differing opinions and approaches and making links to topics that range from geology to ecology, poetry, architecture, public art, sculpture, drawing, film, philosophy, site, and all the stops between.

The first Tuesday Text series publishes the following essays:

Gary Shapiro on Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty  (1970)

Barbara Miller on Nancy Holt’s Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings (1977-78)

Craig Dworkin on Robert Smithson’s A heap of Language (1966)

Joy Sleeman on Nancy Holt’s Trail Markers (1969)

Bridget Crone on Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson’s Swamp (1971)

Phyllis Tuchman on Robert Smithson’s A Nonsite (Franklin, New Jersey) (1968)

Aurora Tang on Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson’s Mono Lake (1968/2004)

Amelia Barikin on Robert Smithson’s Rocks and Mirror Square II (1971)

Marin R. Sullivan on Robert Smithson’s Cayuga Salt Mine Project (1969)

Our next Tuesday Text series will be published in Fall 2020.

Still from Nancy Holt, Bob with Books, Roof of 799 Greenwich St., New York, 1971
Color, silent
16 mm film

Archived News

poster for Smithson's film Spiral Jetty 1970 cropped

Soft Network Benefit Auction

We are pleased to participate in the Soft Network Benefit Auction, open on Artsy from September 23 until October 7, 2026. The auction brings together works in support of Soft Network and the Artist Foundations and Estate Leaders List (AFELL), an international network for artists and stewards of artists’ estates and legacies. Holt/Smithson Foundation has donated two rare works of art by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson to the auction to help further this goal. 

Nancy Holt's "Starfire" (1986) as installed at the Powder Art Foundation, Utah, 2025

“Starfire” at Powder Art Foundation Fall Open Day and Utah Museum of Fine Arts Land Art Week

On October 2, from 11 am to 3 pm, Powder Art Foundation will host a Fall Open House at Powder Mountain in Eden, Utah where Nancy Holt’s Starfire (1986) can be experienced. Starfire joined the collection of Powder Art Foundation last year. The sculpture comprises eight fire pits arranged in the configuration of the Big Dipper and the North Star, bringing the sky down to earth.

images of a artwork formed of language

Portuguese translation of Smithson's "Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction"

We are pleased to share our collaboration with the São Paulo–based Robert Smithson scholar and professor Antônio Ewbank and publisher Editora Ébria, presenting the first Portuguese translation of the text of Robert Smithson's Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction (1970). Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction is a four-part fold-out work created by Smithson for Aspen Magazine No. 8: The Fluxus Issue, guest edited by Dan Graham and designed by George Maciunas.

A Locator looking to a mirror

Nancy Holt in "10 Years LA!"

From May to August 2026, Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers presented 1 0 Years LA!,at their Los Angeles gallery, an exhibition celebrating the gallery's decade-long presence in the city.