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

spiral jetty film still

Films by Holt and Smithson on view at The Museum of Modern Art

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

signage for an exhibition

"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," from 1972 is currently on show in the exhibition Deep Fields at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris until March 23, 2026.