Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: John Weber Gallery, New York, 1972
Steel pipe, spotlight, cardboard
Overall dimensions: 15 ft. (4.6 m) from spotlight ellipse on wall to sunlight ellipse in window
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Peter Moore
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: John Weber Gallery, New York, 1972
Steel pipe, spotlight, cardboard
Overall dimensions: 15 ft. (4.6 m) from spotlight ellipse on wall to sunlight ellipse in window
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Peter Moore
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight [view through Locator] (1972)
Installation view: John Weber Gallery, New York, 1972
Steel pipe, spotlight, cardboard
Overall dimensions: 15 ft. (4.6 m) from spotlight ellipse on wall to sunlight ellipse in window
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Peter Moore
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight [view through Locator] (1972)
Installation view: John Weber Gallery, New York, 1972
Steel pipe, spotlight, cardboard
Overall dimensions: 15 ft. (4.6 m) from spotlight ellipse on wall to sunlight ellipse in window
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Peter Moore
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: John Weber Gallery, New York, 1972
Steel pipe, spotlight, cardboard
Overall dimensions: 15 ft. (4.6 m) from spotlight ellipse on wall to sunlight ellipse in window
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Peter Moore
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: John Weber Gallery, New York, 1972
Steel pipe, spotlight, cardboard
Overall dimensions: 15 ft. (4.6 m) from spotlight ellipse on wall to sunlight ellipse in window
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Peter Moore
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Locating Perception, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, 2022
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Robert Wedemeyer
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Locating Perception, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, 2022
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Robert Wedemeyer
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Locating Perception, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, 2022
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Robert Wedemeyer
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Locating Perception, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, 2022
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Robert Wedemeyer
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Locating Perception, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, 2022
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Robert Wedemeyer
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Locating Perception, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, 2022
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Robert Wedemeyer
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Locating Perception, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, 2022
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Robert Wedemeyer
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Locating Perception, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, 2022
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Robert Wedemeyer
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Locating Perception, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, 2022
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Robert Wedemeyer
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Locating Perception, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, 2022
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Photograph: Robert Wedemeyer
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: Nancy Holt, Dia:Chelsea, New York, 2018
Photograph: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Installation view: Nancy Holt, Dia:Chelsea, New York, 2018
Photograph: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Installation view “All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today,” Kunsthalle Bielefeld 2025, Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Installation view “All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today,” Kunsthalle Bielefeld 2025, Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Installation view “All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today,” Kunsthalle Bielefeld 2025, Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Installation view “All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today,” Kunsthalle Bielefeld 2025, Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Installation view “All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today,” Kunsthalle Bielefeld 2025, Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Nancy Holt, Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972)
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl and window
Overall dimensions variable (site responsive)
Locator: 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm)
Installation view “All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today,” Kunsthalle Bielefeld 2025, Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight was first exhibited at John Weber Gallery in New York City in 1972, not long after Holt created her first Locators looking out the windows of her studio in the West Village onto details of the built environment, such as a cracked window or an exhuast pipe. After focusing on the subject of sight in these early Locator works, Holt transitioned into an investigation of the process of sight itself.
Looking up through Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight, one sees an ellipse of light created by a spotlight aimed at the wall, which resolves into a perfect orb of light when looking through the Locator. Moving around the Locator to look the other direction, one sees through a circular aperture in the window to the outside. In her text "The Dialectics of Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight" Holt articulates her interest in the contrast between the persistent artificial glow of the electric light with the ever-changing natural light. By channeling vision through the Locator and manipulating light through spatial interventions in Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight, Holt draws parallels between light and sight and poses questions about the interrelated nature of these two phenomena.
1. Concrete vs. Ephemeral
Light, like sight, can be channeled, controlled so that shapes of light can materialize. In Holes of Light these shapes of contained light were outlined on the wall in pencil giving them even more of a physical presence, so that even when the light or sight is absent, a trace remains.
2. Light as the Concretization of Sight
Well, I think of light as being analogous to sight—you know, when it's dark you can't see. In the early room installations, I was casting quart light and spotlights to form shapes of light on the wall. Sometimes you saw these shapes of light through a locator perfectly framed in your vision, like in Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972). I was exploring light and sight and how they interrelate.
Nancy Holt
Meyer, James. "Interview with Nancy Holt." In Sightlines, edited by Alena J. Williams, 230. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
Holt’s Locators articulate several of her key concepts. Composed of a horizontal steel pipe mounted at eye level, the Locators function as lensless telescopes, directing and concentrating vision rather than magnifying it. Locator (PS1) was first shown at PS1 (now known as MoMA PS1), a former school building in Long Island City, New York in 1980.
Installed in the shared studio space of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson's loft in New York City, Locator (Studio Corner) is one of the earliest Locator works that Holt created, and the first that solely engaged interior space. In contrast to other early Locator works that Holt created in her studio—which concentrated vision on preexisting details in the built environment outside Holt's studio window—Locator (Studio Corner) focuses vision on a black shape that Holt painted in the corner of the room.
