Description

The Holt/Smithson Foundation (HSF), founded by the visionary Conceptual artist Nancy Holt (1938-2014), stewards the creative legacies of Holt and her husband, Robert Smithson (1938-73), seminal figures in the field of Land Art. HSF will launch a project aimed at advancing the awareness and understanding of Holt’s production—to date, under-studied and over-shadowed by those of her male counterparts—providing access to resources related to Holt’s remarkable “Systems Works” (1960s-1980s). These built structures/installations, through which Holt explored systems of language, planetary cycles, climate, and literal and metaphorical power flows, are particularly relevant at this pivotal moment of climate change. HSF will digitize related works on paper, archival documentation across media, unpublished photography, and commission scholarly essays to be publicly accessible to scholars, curators, and students through the HSF website. They will additionally produce oral histories of the artist’s collaborators and create an “artwork instruction manual” to facilitate the guided reconstruction for Holt’s “Hot Water Heat” (1984).