28 Facts About Nancy Holt

Nancy Holt was an American artist most known for her public sculpture, installation art, concrete poetry, and land art.

Nancy Holt studied biology at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

Nancy Holt graduated in 1960 and went on a trip to Europe with her friends.

Nancy Holt began her artistic career as a photographer and as a video artist.

Nancy Holt contributed to various publications, which have featured both her written articles and photographs.

Nancy Holt received five National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, New York Creative Artist Fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Nancy Holt along with Beverly Pepper was a recipient of the International Sculpture Center's 2013 Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award.

In 2008 Nancy Holt helped rally opposition to a plan for exploratory drilling near the site of Smithson's Spiral Jetty at the Great Salt Lake in rural Utah.

Nancy Holt died in New York City on February 8,2014, at the age of 75.

Nancy Holt believed this artistic movement came about in the United States due to the vastness of the American landscape.

Nancy Holt thought about human scale in relation to the works she created.

Nancy Holt's works incorporate the passage of time and function to keep time.

Nancy Holt has said that she is concerned with making art that not only makes an impact visually, but is functional and necessary in society, as seen in works like Sky Mound, which serves a dual function as a sculpture and park and it generates alternative energy.

Nancy Holt worked in collaboration with an architect, landscape architect, engineers, and real estate developers on the work.

For Rock Rings, Nancy Holt searched far and wide to find the right masons to work on the piece and had local stone called schist, which was 250-million-years old, quarried by hand for the work.

Nancy Holt searched for and found a site which was remote and empty.

Nancy Holt sometimes created this relationship with reflecting pools and shadow patterns marked on the ground, like in her work Star Crossed.

Nancy Holt worked with an architect, landscape architect, engineers and real estate developers on the project.

Nancy Holt paid attention to how people both inside and outside the park would see the spheres.

However, Nancy Holt made sure not to alienate the park entirely from its surroundings.

Nancy Holt held a fascination with solar eclipses, as well as in the shadows cast by the sun on the surface of the earth and the name of the park is a reference to the astronomical appearance of the large spheres that are its most distinct features.

Nancy Holt took on the challenging task of playing many roles in the park's creation, becoming at once an artist, landscape designer and committee member for approving plans for a nearby building.

In 1979, Nancy Holt was commissioned to do two works on the grounds of Miami University in Ohio, the temporary work Polar Circle and the permanent sculptureStar-Crossed.

The state's Hackensack Meadowland Development Commission asked Nancy Holt to reclaim the site in an effort to provide an environmentally safe spot for plant and animal life to reside and for humans to enjoy.

Nancy Holt believed the work would increase awareness of the complex problem of how we dispose of our waste and trash.

Nancy Holt made Underscan in 1974 using still images of her aunt Ethel's home in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and an underscanning device to tell a story of aging and the passage of time.

The entirety of the voice-over is completed with Nancy Holt reading in a deadpan tone and metronome rhythm, which normalizes life and death as equivalent human experiences.

Since 2021, Nancy Holt's estate has been represented by Spruth Magers and Parafin.