Nancy Holt, Polar Circle (1979)
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA
Stone lamp posts, metal chain
The twelve deinstalled lamp posts are aligned at 30-degree intervals starting from the north direction on a compass
Height 10 ft (3 m), diameter 20 ft (6.1 m)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Polar Circle (1979)
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA
Stone lamp posts, metal chain
The twelve deinstalled lamp posts are aligned at 30-degree intervals starting from the north direction on a compass
Height 10 ft (3 m), diameter 20 ft (6.1 m)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Polar Circle (1979)
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA
Stone lamp posts, metal chain
The twelve deinstalled lamp posts are aligned at 30-degree intervals starting from the north direction on a compass
Height 10 ft (3 m), diameter 20 ft (6.1 m)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Polar Circle (1979)
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA
Stone lamp posts, metal chain
The twelve deinstalled lamp posts are aligned at 30-degree intervals starting from the north direction on a compass
Height 10 ft (3 m), diameter 20 ft (6.1 m)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Polar Circle (1979)
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA
Stone lamp posts, metal chain
The twelve deinstalled lamp posts are aligned at 30-degree intervals starting from the north direction on a compass
Height 10 ft (3 m), diameter 20 ft (6.1 m)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Polar Circle (1979)
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA
Stone lamp posts, metal chain
The twelve deinstalled lamp posts are aligned at 30-degree intervals starting from the north direction on a compass
Height 10 ft (3 m), diameter 20 ft (6.1 m)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Polar Circle (1979)
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA
Stone lamp posts, metal chain
The twelve deinstalled lamp posts are aligned at 30-degree intervals starting from the north direction on a compass
Height 10 ft (3 m), diameter 20 ft (6.1 m)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Polar Circle (1979)
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA
Stone lamp posts, metal chain
The twelve deinstalled lamp posts are aligned at 30-degree intervals starting from the north direction on a compass
Height 10 ft (3 m), diameter 20 ft (6.1 m)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
In 1979 Miami University in Oxford, Ohio invited Nancy Holt to create a temporary sculpture for its campus. In April she developed Polar Circle from abandoned lamp posts found on the site. Made of stone, these ten-foot-high posts had been cast around 1930. Working with students, Holt set the twelve posts in a circle. Starting from the north direction on a compass, each was aligned at 30-degree intervals. A steel chain fixed to the top of each post linked them into a continuous whole.
Shortly after it was installed, the sculpture was accidentally dismantled by the university grounds crew. A site-responsive sculpture, Polar Circle has the potential to be reinstalled in a grassy field setting. While developing this work, Holt completed the sculpture Star-Crossed, which remains on campus.
[The found lamp posts are] historical materials, materials with a past, with lives of their own [... they are] fragments used in the world before, [...] in the tradition of eighteenth century conscious ruins.
Nancy Holt, 1979
Text produced for her concurrent exhibition in the Miami University Art Museum
Star-Crossed, like Hydra’s Head (1974) and Sun Tunnels (1973-76) is a sculpture Holt described as “bringing the sky down to earth.” It is sited on the campus of Miami University Art Museum, one of the few places where true (or astronomical) north and magnetic north met in 1979.
Overlooking Lake Austin on The Contemporary Austin's Laguna Gloria campus, Time Span is anchored in earth, water, and sky. On April 5th, the artist’s birthday, the shadows encircle a plaque on the ground that details the work’s completion—which also occurred on April 5th, 1981.
