close up shot of a mangrove plant with dark leaves and a stem extending down into the blue ocean water

Weekend Screening: Nancy Holt's "Mangrove Ring"

This weekend we continue with the second screening in our second season of Friday Films: Nancy Holt’s Mangrove Ring (1971).

Mangrove Ring features a sculpture Smithson created in the ocean using mangrove seedlings while traveling in Florida. Off the coast of Summerland Key Smithson planted a ring of mangroves with the intent to grow an island over a three-year period. To learn more about Mangrove Ring and Smithson’s interest in islands, watch the introduction to the film by our Executive Director Lisa Le Feuvre and visit the Robert Smithson Online Viewing Room on the Marian Goodman Gallery website.

Mangrove Ring will be available on Vimeo and InstagramTV from 12 p.m. Mountain Time on Friday, November 20 through to 12 p.m. Mountain Time on Monday, November 23.

Mangrove Ring is one of the five films included in the solo exhibition Hypothetical Islands at Marian Goodman Gallery London, which is the first solo exhibition of Smithson’s work in the UK. While in person-viewing of this exhibition is currently suspended in compliance with the national mandate in the UK, we will be screening one of the five films on view in the exhibition online every weekend throughout the end of the year. ⁠View the full schedule here.

We will be taking a break from the Friday Film Program for the Thanksgiving holiday next week. We hope you join us the following week to watch The Making of Amarillo Ramp (1973/2013), a film made by Nancy Holt that documents the completion of Smithson’s final earthwork.  

Still from Nancy Holt, "Mangrove Ring" (1971)

Digitized 16 mm film

Color, sound

Duration: 2 minutes 57 seconds

© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York. Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York

Archived News

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From Dawn till Dusk 2025

We are proud to partner with Land Art Lives, in collaboration with Land Art Contemporary, Land Arts of the American West, to present the second edition of a special livestream conversation between two iconic earthworks by Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty (1970) and Broken Circle/Spiral Hill (1971). 

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Chapter Eight of Tuesday Texts

We are happy to announce that throughout August we are publishing the eighth 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. 

Every Tuesday will be publishing a new essay or selecting an essay first published in 2019 on our website, which all include images selected by the author, a short bibliography, citation reference, and endnotes pointing to the author’s references.