Nancy Holt: Inside/Outisde

An in-depth exploration of the pathbreaking works of Nancy Holt, a pioneering practitioner of Conceptual and Land Art

Nancy Holt: Inside/Outside takes a journey through the artist’s key experiments in visual art presenting works never seen before, commissioning new critical thinking, and amplifying knowledge of an artist whose ideas are fundamental to how we define art today. Over the course of fifty years, Nancy Holt’s rich output spanned concrete poetry, audio, film and video, photography, drawings, room-sized installations, earthworks, and public sculpture. Nancy Holt: Inside/Outside details her unique and significant contributions, situating an important female voice within the narratives of land art and conceptual art.

Initiating her art practice in 1966 with concrete poetry, she soon expanded her ideas into other media and the landscape. Through each of the mediums she worked in, Holt explored how we understand our place in the world by investigating perception and site within and outside of traditional museum contexts.

In the mid-1970s Holt completed her most influential earthwork, Sun Tunnels, an artwork central to the definition of land art. Rigorous documentation of Holt’s work, as well as contributions by key scholars, previously unseen photoworks and drawings, and a revealing, never-before-published ＂self-interview＂ by the artist bring her work into far fuller context. Developed in close consultation with Holt/Smithson Foundation, an artist endowed organization dedicated to preserving and extending the work of Nancy Holt and her husband Robert Smithson, this expansive publication will serve as a major contribution to the critical ongoing research into the art of our time.

This new book is published to coincide with an exhibition anchored at Bildmuseet in Umeå, Sweden, and traveling to MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and further internationally.

Nancy Holt (1938-2014) was a member of the Earth, Land, and Conceptual Art movements. A pioneer of site-specific installation and the moving image, Holt recalibrated the limits of art. She expanded the places where art could be found and embraced the new media of her time. Across five decades she asked questions about how we might understand our place in the world, investigating perception, systems, and place. Holt’s rich artistic output spanned concrete poetry, audioworks, film and video, photography, slideworks, ephemeral gestures, drawings, room-sized installations, earthworks, artists’ books, and public sculpture commissions.
Born in Worcester, MA, she grew up in New Jersey and graduated with a degree in biology from Tufts University in 1960. Later that year she moved to New York City where she met the artist Robert Smithson; the two were married on June 8, 1963. Holt’s work is held in major collections including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum für Gegenswartkunst, Germany; Utah Museum of Fine Arts; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2018 Sun Tunnels and Holes of Light were acquired by Dia Art Foundation, with support from Holt/Smithson Foundation.
Lisa Le Feuvre is the inaugural Executive Director of Holt/Smithson Foundation. Committed to communicating and testing ideas, she has curated exhibitions in museums and galleries across Europe, published writings in international publications and journals, and has played a pivotal role in shaping academic and arts organizations, including as the head of the Henry Moore Institute (2010-17).
Katarina Pierre is director of the Bildmuseet at Umeå University, Sweden. She holds a Master of Arts in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmith´s College in London, UK. She has worked at Bildmuseet ssince 1995, where she has overseen highly acclaimed exhibitionsby artists such as Walid Raad, Sara Jordenö, Zineb Seidram, Florian Zeyfang, and Isaac Julien.