Robert Smithson, Amarillo Ramp (1973)
Tecovas Lake, Amarillo, Texas
Diameter: 140 ft. (42.7 m)
Height: Ground level to 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Photograph: Gianfranco Gorgoni
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Robert Smithson, Amarillo Ramp (1973)
Tecovas Lake, Amarillo, Texas
Diameter: 140 ft. (42.7 m)
Height: Ground level to 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Photograph: Gianfranco Gorgoni
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Robert Smithson, Amarillo Ramp (1973)
Tecovas Lake, Amarillo, Texas
Diameter: 140 ft. (43 m)
Height: Ground level to 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Photography: Gianfranco Gorgoni
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Robert Smithson, Amarillo Ramp (1973)
Tecovas Lake, Amarillo, Texas
Diameter: 140 ft. (43 m)
Height: Ground level to 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Photography: Gianfranco Gorgoni
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Robert Smithson, Amarillo Ramp (1973)
Tecovas Lake, Amarillo, Texas
Diameter: 140 ft. (43 m)
Height: Ground level to 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Photography: Gianfranco Gorgoni
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Robert Smithson, Amarillo Ramp (1973)
Tecovas Lake, Amarillo, Texas
Diameter: 140 ft. (43 m)
Height: Ground level to 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Photography: Gianfranco Gorgoni
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Richard Serra, Nancy Holt, and Tony Shafrazi posing for a photo after the completion of Smithson's Amarillo Ramp, 1973.
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Richard Serra, Nancy Holt, and Tony Shafrazi posing for a photo after the completion of Smithson's Amarillo Ramp, 1973.
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Robert Smithson’s Amarillo Ramp is located seventeen miles northwest of Amarillo, Texas, on the edge of Tecovas Lake, a constructed reservoir that is now dry. The artwork was commissioned by Stanley Marsh 3, a local rancher and patron of the arts, who described the earthwork as a “comma in the landscape.”
On July 20, 1973, while surveying and photographing the site of the earthwork in progress, Smithson died in a small airplane accident along with pilot Gale Ray Rogers and photographer Richard I. Curtin. Following Smithson’s death, Nancy Holt, Richard Serra, and Tony Shafrazi worked with local tradespeople to complete Amarillo Ramp according to his specifications.
Overgrown with mesquite and altered by erosion, Amarillo Ramp bears witness to the processes of change that Smithson understood as intrinsic to landscape itself. Its shifting form reflects his interest in geological time, transformation, and the interaction between artwork and site. Continued efforts to preserve the work as a ruin speak to the enduring significance of Smithson’s legacy.
This artwork is located on private land, and access requires advance booking: click here for details on how to visit Amarillo Ramp.
The Making of Amarillo Ramp is one of a series of moving image works made by Nancy Holt that focus on an earthwork by Robert Smithson. The site of Amarillo Ramp is seventeen miles northwest of Amarillo, Texas on the edge of the Tecovas Lake—a constructed dam, that today is dry.
In a sand quarry in the Northeastern Netherlands, Smithson has carved into the shoreline, flooding the resulting dikes to form an interlocking canal and jetty. At the sculpture’s center lies a single glacial boulder, while the hillside above features a winding spiral path—a manifestation of Smithson’s fascination with spirals and their elusive promise of a final destination. The work iterates the irreversible impact of industry—the land can never go back to what it was before—yet its hypnotizing beauty calls for a reevaluation of the relationship between nature and construction.
