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

a notebook showing calculations for Sun Tunnels

Nancy Holt’s Project Files Digitized at the Archives of American Art

The papers of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson are held at the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art. This series documents more than 50 projects developed by Holt from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, offering insights into her working processes and the development of her ideas from initial conception through to completion.

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.