“I wanted to examine the human perception of time and space, earth and sky.” –Nancy Holt

Nancy Holt
Electrical System, 1982
3/4 in. steel conduit, lighting and electrical fixtures, light bulbs, electrical wire
Dimensions variable
“I wanted to examine the human perception of time and space, earth and sky.” –Nancy Holt
Nancy Holt’s work addresses the consistent examination of how we attempt to understand our place in the world. The artist is one of the most important figures of earth, land, and conceptual art movements. An innovator of site-specific installation and the moving image, she recalibrated the limits of art, expanding the places where art could be found and embracing the new media of her time. Across five decades she investigated perception, systems and place.
Nancy Holt
Electrical System, 1982
3/4 in. steel conduit, lighting and electrical fixtures, light bulbs, electrical wire
Dimensions variable
Installation view, David Bellman Gallery, Toronto, 1982
© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt
Electrical System, 1982
3/4 in. steel conduit, lighting and electrical fixtures, light bulbs, electrical wire
Dimensions variable
Installation view, David Bellman Gallery, Toronto, 1982
© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Installation view, David Bellman Gallery, Toronto, 1982
© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Electrical System exposes resources so common to contemporary life that their visual, tangible existence often goes forgotten. It consists of lightbulbs connected by a long metal conduit that curves and winds, inviting viewers to meander through arches of light. The System Works, like her formative text, audio and light investigations, make use of found systems to reveal what is unseen. They are formed from standard industrial materials designed for introducing heating, ventilation, lighting and drainage into the built environment—as Holt noted, they expose “fragments of vast, hidden networks” that are “part of vast open-ended systems, part of the world.”
Nancy Holt
Tour of the John Weber Gallery, 1972
Instructions and portable tape recorder
11:13 min
Signs: 101.3 × 91.4 cm
39 7/8 × 36 inches
Scores: 27.9 × 21.6 cm
11 × 8.5 inches
Holt’s works—be they materialized in sound, on paper, as an object, a moving image, an earthwork, an extension of architectural systems, a sculpture to look through or a single sentence—are invitations to stop, to look, to think, to pay attention, to observe the world as it changes, and with this to recognize the systems that structure and locate perception. Photography for Holt was a language, as well as a medium.
Nancy Holt
Tour of the John Weber Gallery, 1972
Instructions and portable tape recorder
11:13 min
Signs: 101.3 × 91.4 cm
39 7/8 × 36 inches
Scores: 27.9 × 21.6 cm
11 × 8.5 inches
Holt’s works—be they materialized in sound, on paper, as an object, a moving image, an earthwork, an extension of architectural systems, a sculpture to look through or a single sentence—are invitations to stop, to look, to think, to pay attention, to observe the world as it changes, and with this to recognize the systems that structure and locate perception. Photography for Holt was a language, as well as a medium.
In 1971 she created her first sculptures, “seeing devices,” as she called them, drawing attention to visual perception and place. The Locators comprise industrial piping welded into a T-shape and are to be looked through with one eye. They direct attention to the time-bound processes of vision. In 1992, she recalled: “I woke up one morning, I went to a welding place, made some of these Locator pieces, and overnight I had produced physical objects. They weren't things that you looked at, but they were things you looked through. I would zero in on something you wouldn't notice at all until you looked through my Locator, and then you would be kind of startled.”
Nancy Holt
Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight, 1972
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl, window
dimensions variable
Nancy Holt
Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight, 1972 (installation view)
Nancy Holt
Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight, 1972
Nancy Holt
Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight, 1972
Steel pipe, spotlight, vinyl, window
dimensions variable
Nancy Holt
Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight, 1972 (installation view)
Nancy Holt
Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight, 1972
The first Locators looked out from the windows of her studio in the West Village neighborhood of New York on details, such as a cracked window or a ventilation pipe. She soon became more interested in the process of seeing than in the subject of sight. Locator Spotlight with Sunlight (1972) explores the difference between light formed by the sun and electric light. Locator (PS1) (1980) looks up to an irregular shape that becomes a circle when viewed through the Locator, and down to an outline that likewise shifts to a circle. The Locators directly led to Holt’s landmark earthwork, Sun Tunnels (1973–76).
Nancy Holt
Locator (PS1), 1980
Steel pipe, drawing medium, black paint
152.4 × 30.5 × 5 cm
60 × 12 × 2 inches
Nancy Holt
Locator (PS1), 1980 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Locator (PS1), 1980 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Locator (PS1), 1980 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Locator (PS1), 1980
Steel pipe, drawing medium, black paint
152.4 × 30.5 × 5 cm
60 × 12 × 2 inches
Nancy Holt
Locator (PS1), 1980 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Locator (PS1), 1980 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Locator (PS1), 1980 (detail)
The first Locators looked out from the windows of her studio in the West Village neighborhood of New York on details, such as a cracked window or a ventilation pipe. She soon became more interested in the process of seeing than in the subject of sight. Locator Spotlight with Sunlight (1972) explores the difference between light formed by the sun and electric light. Locator (PS1) (1980) looks up to an irregular shape that becomes a circle when viewed through the Locator, and down to an outline that likewise shifts to a circle. The Locators directly led to Holt’s landmark earthwork, Sun Tunnels (1973–76).
Photography was an essential medium for Holt – it enabled “vision to be fixed,” as she often said.
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978
Inkjet print on archival rag paper (22 parts)
49.5 × 76.2 cm (each)
19 1/2 × 30 inches (each)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978
Inkjet print on archival rag paper (22 parts)
49.5 × 76.2 cm (each)
19 1/2 × 30 inches (each)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978
Inkjet print on archival rag paper (22 parts)
49.5 × 76.2 cm (each)
19 1/2 × 30 inches (each)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, 1978 (detail)
From 1968 she traveled through the US Interstate Highway System to create visual poems from repeating observed occurrences of human marks in the landscape. California Sun Signs (1972) is a visual poem collecting the word "sun" as it appears in nineteen commercial and infrastructural contexts throughout the state of California. Uniting disparate sites into a solar-ordered system in vibrant images, she reveals common inferences and conceptions of the sun.
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972
Inkjet prints on archival rag paper (19 parts)
38.4 × 38.4 cm (each)
15 1/8 × 15 1/8 inches (each)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972
Inkjet prints on archival rag paper (19 parts)
38.4 × 38.4 cm (each)
15 1/8 × 15 1/8 inches (each)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972
Inkjet prints on archival rag paper (19 parts)
38.4 × 38.4 cm (each)
15 1/8 × 15 1/8 inches (each)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Nancy Holt
California Sun Signs, 1972 (detail)
Through her work Western Graveyards (1968) Holt brings together sixty pared-back gravesites in Lone Pine, California and Virginia City, Nevada—sites full of enduring sculptural concerns with memorial and material encounters. Some graves are marked with names to be remembered: mother, father, Baby Baxter. Some map out a space for rest in stone, shells and fences. A few rise into ruin, headstones slipping to the ground, protective railings buckled, flower bushes dried out.
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968
Inkjet prints on archival rag paper (60 parts)
45.7 × 45.7 cm (each)
18 × 18 inches (each)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968
Inkjet prints on archival rag paper (60 parts)
45.7 × 45.7 cm (each)
18 × 18 inches (each)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968
Inkjet prints on archival rag paper (60 parts)
45.7 × 45.7 cm (each)
18 × 18 inches (each)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Western Graveyards, 1968 (detail)
Nancy Holt
Locating Perception
October 28, 2022–January 14, 2023
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