Nancy Holt Read Bio Collapse
Nancy Holt (1938-2014) was a member of the earth, land, and conceptual art movements. An innovator 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. In the 1970s, Holt made a series of pioneering film and video works, including several collaborations with Robert Smithson. Holt’s early videos, which are among the most iconic works in the medium, explore perception and memory through experiments with point of view and process. 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 spans concrete poetry, audioworks, film and video, photography, slideworks, ephemeral gestures, drawings, room-sized installations, earthworks, artists’ books, and public sculpture commissions.