Past Exhibitions

Nancy Holt: Power Systems

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A gallery space lit by a network of light bulbs connected via an exposed system of electrical conduits. A white wall with text is visible on the left.

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Feb 08, 2025–Jun 29, 2025

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Explore the most extensive presentation yet of groundbreaking artist Nancy Holt’s investigations into the systems that power our world.

Electricity brings us light and heat, oil powers buildings, and our waste decomposes in landfills. Yet we rarely, if ever, attend to the processes of these systems. Showcased in Nancy Holt: Power Systems, Holt’s System Works give these hidden structures sculptural presence. You’ll encounter Pipeline, which runs from outside the Wex into its lower lobby, and the immersive, room-size installations Electrical System and Heating System, which you can interact with.

The exhibition also features Holt’s innovative work across media, including sculpture, works on paper, film, and photography. Photography was an essential medium for Holt. The photographic series Time Outs and Texas Claims show how the process of viewing a particular place or activity through the camera enabled Holt to share her singular way of seeing with others. As a new media artist, Holt created experimental film and video works, including Revolve and Sun Tunnels, that explore the possibilities of narrative and technological aspects of the moving image. Experience an experimental approach to an interview in Revolve and the making of the large-scale earthwork Sun Tunnels, located in Utah’s Great Basin Desert.

Drawing was integral to Holt’s practice. You can study detailed drawings created for her System Works, including those installed in the Wex galleries. Other plans show incomplete projects, like Sky Mound, Holt’s most ambitious, which proposed transforming a massive landfill into a sanctuary for people and wildlife.

You’ll also encounter several written and audio works that probe how language, itself a system, can transform our perceptions of what we see. Others, like her concrete poem Making Waves, test the structure, content, and form of language.

In all the works in the exhibition, Holt draws our attention to the hidden structures that we rely on every day. In making them visible, she allows us to see not only what is there, but what is possible and what they make impossible.

"Holt saw the human body itself as an intricate system contained within larger ones."

Ela Bittencourt, Hyperallergic

Spring 2025 Learning Guide
”Critics’ Picks Columbus, OH: Nancy Holt: Wexner Center for the Arts,” Annie Dell'Aria, Artforum

Nancy Holt, Electrical System, 1982. Steel conduit, lighting and electrical fixtures, light bulbs, electrical wire, and electricity, dimensions variable. Installation view at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 2025. © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York.

A dim gallery space lit by a network of light bulbs connected via an exposed system of electrical conduits. There is a blurry figure in the background.

A light fixture with a brightly lit bulb is affixed to the floor via four sections of steel conduit that each curve up into the air at a 45-degree angle.

Nancy Holt, Electrical System, 1982 (detail). Steel conduit, lighting and electrical fixtures, light bulbs, electrical wire, and electricity, 55 ft. x 16 ft. x 9 ft. 6 in. Installation view of Nancy Holt: Light and Language at Lismore Castle Arts, Waterford, Ireland, 2021. © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York. Photo: Jed Niezgoda.

An oblique angle of a reading room with an exposed and functional electrical system on the wall above built-in benches. Two book ledges are visible on the right.

Nancy Holt, Electrical Lighting for Reading Room, 1985. Electrical conduit, steel cages, chains, light bulbs, electrical wire, and electricity, 16 x 24 x 12 ft. Installation view at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 2025. Courtesy of Holt/Smithson Foundation and Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles. © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York.

A bright gallery space with a wood floor and a rectangular and circular network of steel pipes, valves, and radiators that make a heating system.

Nancy Holt, Heating System, 1984–85 (detail). Galvanized steel pipe, valves, gauges, radiators, and water, dimensions variable. Installation view at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 2025. © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York.

A close-up of a series of circular and rectangular bended steel pipes on a wooden and granite floor. They intersect visually, creating geometric shapes.

A blurry figure in a gallery set in a rectangular grouping of steel pipes, valves, and radiators. There are two rectangular drawings on the back wall

A dimly lit space with a cushioned bench in front of a projection of a film on the center wall. The title SUN TUNNELS appears over a detail of a globe.

Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels, 1978 (film still). 16mm film, color, sound; 26:31 mins. Installation view at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 2025. © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York. Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York.

Two framed schematic drawings of an installation of rows of pyramid-shaped electrical conduit hang on a gallery wall.

From left to right: Study for Electrical System II: Bellman Circuit and Electrical System II: Bellman Circuit, 1982. Graphite pencil on paper, 36 x 48 in. Installation view at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 2025. Collection of Art Gallery of Ontario. Donated by June and Bill Bellman, 1990. © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York.

A steel pipeline travels along a wall, curves through U- and L-bends, juts out from the wall, and then terminates on a platform that has a pool of oil on it.

Nancy Holt, Pipeline (detail), 1986. Steel and oil. Installation view at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 2024. Copyright Holt/Smithson Foundation. Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York.

Graph paper titled Making Waves, a key (feminist-dash, artist-solid, mystic-dotted), and three spiky chart lines. The axis reads “Time 2/2/72 0, 4, 8, 16, 20, 24 hours.”

Nancy Holt, Making Waves, 1972. Ink on paper, 8 1/2 x 11 in. © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York.

Nancy Holt directs a tractor trailer that is pulling a large concrete tube with three holes pierced through the side wall across desert scrub brush.

Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels, 1978 (still). 16mm film, color, sound; 26:31 mins. Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York. © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York.

Black-and-white blurred photo capture of a television broadcast showing a pro football player running on a field.

Nancy Holt, Time Outs, 1985 (detail). Thirty-two inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 35mm transparencies, 18 x 27 in. each. © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York.

Drawing of a park with a radial design. Conical mounds are circumscribed by a path. Four intersecting paths meet in the middle of the park.

Nancy Holt, Sky Mound: Sun Viewing Area with Pond and Star Viewing Mounds, 1985. Colored pencil on paper, 23 1/2 x 47 1/2 in. © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York.

Schematic drawing of ventilation ductwork in three main vertical sections ending in turbine vents. The sections are connected by horizontal ducts.

Nancy Holt, Untitled drawing for Ventilation I, c. 1985. Graphite pencil on paper, 18 x 24 in. © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York.

Photograph of a wetland area bisected by a barbed wire fence. Water in the foreground gives way to marsh grasses and a channel in the background.

Nancy Holt, Texas Claims, 1969. Seven inkjet prints on archival rag paper from original 126 format transparencies. 15 x 15 in. each. © Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York.

About the artist and curator

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. 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, audio works, film and video, photography, ephemeral gestures, drawings, room-sized installations, earthworks, artists’ books, and public sculpture commissions. Holt described herself as a “perception artist”; throughout her oeuvre she repeatedly challenges us to look beyond what we think we know.

Lisa Le Feuvre is a curator, writer, and editor. She is the inaugural executive director of Holt/Smithson Foundation, the artist-endowed foundation dedicated to the creative legacies of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. Between 2010 and 2017 Le Feuvre was head of sculpture studies at the Henry Moore Institute, directing the research component of the largest artist-endowed foundation in Europe, leading programs of education, research, collections, publications, and exhibitions focused on sculptural thinking. She has curated more than 70 exhibitions as an institutional and independent curator, played a pivotal role in shaping academic and arts organizations, edited over 30 books and journals, spoken at museums and universities across the world, and has published more than 100 essays and interviews with artists.

Tag(s)

Exhibitions

Nancy Holt: Power Systems is curated by Lisa Le Feuvre, executive director of Holt/Smithson Foundation and developed in partnership with Holt/Smithson Foundation.

THIS PRESENTATION IS MADE POSSIBLE BY
Ohio State Energy Partners

EXHIBITIONS 2024–25 SEASON MADE POSSIBLE BY
Bill and Sheila Lambert
Crane Family Foundation

FREE GALLERIES MADE POSSIBLE BY
Adam Flatto
PNC Foundation

WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY
Greater Columbus Arts Council
The Wexner Family
Institute of Museum and Library Services
Mellon Foundation
Every Page Foundation
Ohio Arts Council, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts
CampusParc
Nationwide Foundation
Lois S. and H. Roy Chope Fund of The Columbus Foundation
The Columbus Foundation
Axium Packaging

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
Ohio History Fund/Ohio History Connection
David Crane and Elizabeth Dang
Louise Lambert Braver