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Call for Participation: Nancy Holt Scholar's Day

Type: Conferences & Symposia [View all]
Posted by: Dia Art Foundation
Deadline: Mon, October 15th, 2018

Dia Art Foundation seeks participants for a scholar’s day devoted to Nancy Holt (1938–2014) taking place on Monday, February 11, 2019. 

Holt’s five-decade-long practice included work in art, architecture, and time-based media, which involved singular meditations on interior and exterior environments. Holt is well-known for her iconic Sun Tunnels (1973–76), a pioneering work of Land art located in the Great Basin Desert in northwestern Utah. Dia acquired Sun Tunnelsin spring 2018, the first work of Land art by a woman to enter Dia’s collection. Alongside her many public commissions, land reclamation projects, and other outdoor works, Holt made artists’ books, audio works, concrete poetry, film, photographs, installations, and videos. On September 15, 2018, Dia will open an exhibition of Holt’s room-sized light installations Holes of Light (1973) and Mirrors of Light I (1974), and two works from her Locator series, Dual Locators (1972) and Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight (1972).  Ideas developed while making these works led to the creation of Sun Tunnels.

On the occasion of the acquisition of Sun Tunnelsand the exhibition, the scholar’s day aims to recognize Nancy Holt’s singular understanding of location, experience, and site-specificity in critical relationship to the art of her generation, while also underscoring her import to contemporary art and artists.  The selected participants will have the chance to attend presentations by leading scholars that will focus on a single work or series by the artist. This will allow participants to further their own understanding of Holt’s body of works and to participate in discussions with their peers. 

We invite applications from graduate students and emerging curators and scholars (no more than 7 years of work experience and/or untenured faculty) from a wide variety of fields, including, but not limited to, architecture, art history, environmental studies, geography, history of science, literature, philosophy, and performance studies, among others. Participants will be chosen based on research interests that pertain to Holt and her expanded practice. 

In addition to the exhibition and the scholar’s day, participants will have the opportunity to attend a full weekend of public programs devoted to Holt’s work. On Saturday, February 9, a full-day symposium on Holt will focus on Sun Tunnels as a primary point of departure to consider defining features of Holt’s practice, including site-specificity, material conditions of visual perception, universal time, engagement with the built and natural environment, and emphasis on experiential forms of viewership.

Applications should consist of a single PDF file containing the following:

+ participant’s name, email address, and institutional affiliation 

+ one-page CV

+ abstract of no more than 250 words that outlines research interests pertaining to Nancy Holt

Send applications to: Geneviève Marcil, Research Assistant, Dia Art Foundation, gmarcil@diaart.org.

Applications must be received by 5 p.m EST. on Monday, October 15, 2018. 

Announcement of accepted participants will be made by email in November 2018. Dia will provide partial funding to a limited number of participants traveling from outside of the Northeastern United States. Please indicate the need for funding in your application.

Posted on Tue, September 11th, 2018
Expires on Mon, October 15th, 2018

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