Nancy Holt ― Sightlines

Newly available in paperback, this landmark volume is the definitive study of the work of visionary American artist Nancy Holt (19382014). Since the late 1960s, Holt’s wide-ranging production has included Land artparticularly the monumentalSun Tunnels (197376)as well as significant projects in sculpture, installation, photography, film, and video. A comprehensive representation of Holt’s working process in both word and image, Alena J. Williams’s momentous publication illuminates the artist’s interest in physical space and reveals how the geographic variety and boundlessness of the American landscape afforded her numerous opportunities to develop large-scale projects beyond the confines of New York City’s gallery walls. Contributions by a distinguished group of writersincluding Pamela M. Lee, Lucy R. Lippard, Ines Schaber, and Matthew Coolidgechart Holt’s fascinating trajectory from her initial experiments with sound, light, and industrial materials to major site interventions and environmental sculpture. James Meyer’s valuable interview with Holt and Julia Alderson’s illustrated chronology expand our knowledge of this groundbreaking artist and the crucial contexts in which she worked. More than twenty original writings by the artist and a rare selection of her concrete poetry, documentary photographs, and preparatory drawings reveal Holt’s revolutionary concepts of space, time, optics, and scale.

Alena J. Williams teaches modern and contemporary art history and the history and theory of film and media at the University of California, San Diego. She was curator ofNancy Holt: Sightlines, an exhibition of Holt’s Land art, films, video, and related works, which traveled to six venues between 2010 and 2013.