"How did she find herself here? Nancy Holt, 1973-76" A slide installation by Ginger Brooks Takahashi, 1997/2007

Although Nancy Holt has rarely engaged with feminist debates, much of what has been written about her work seeks to inscribe her into a fixed gendered position in relation to the history of Land art. This positioning has historically precluded a more nuanced engagement with questions of artistic production and subjectivity. On the occasion of the Nancy Holt: Sightlines exhibition at the Graham Foundation, two artists—Ginger Brooks Takahashi and Graham Foundation grantee Ines Schaber—consider the role that personal history has played in the reception of Holt's work. Each of them will introduce a new set of propositions on the theme of artistic collaboration through a presentation of their independent work and research in an open discussion format with seminar participants. The discussion will be moderated by Alena J. Williams, Columbia University, New York.

Ines Schaber lives and works in Berlin. She studied fine arts at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin and architectural theory at Princeton University as a DAAD fellow. She is completing her doctorate in Visual Cultures/Center for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths in London on archival practices in image archives. Her work has been shown at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, Actar Gallery, Barcelona, and KW - Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. Schaber was a lecturer / guest professor at a number of international institutions, including the Royal Academy in Copenhagen, the University of Arts in Berlin, Zeppelin University, and the Art Academy in Zurich.

Ginger Brooks Takahashi lives in North Braddock, Pennsylvania and Brooklyn, New York maintaining a social, project-based practice. She produced and performed in the live touring band MEN from 2008 - 2010. She is co-founder of LTTR, a queer and feminist art journal, and projet MOBILIVRE BOOKMOBILE project, a traveling exhibit of artist books and zines. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College and is an alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program. Her work has been presented in the context of exhibitions and programs at the Serpentine Gallery in London, documenta 12 in Kassel, Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto, and the New Museum in New York.

Alena J. Williams is the curator of Nancy Holt: Sightlines, the traveling exhibition on Holt's Land art, films, video, and related works from 1966 to 1980. She is a doctoral candidate in modern and contemporary art in Art History at Columbia University. Williams was a fellow in the postgraduate research group “Media of History – History of Media" at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the recipient of the German Chancellor Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. Her publications include Nancy Holt: Sightlines (UC Press, 2011) and Light Is a Kind of Rhythm (merz&solitude, 2009).

Please note that this seminar is open to architects, artists, educators, and graduate and advanced undergraduate students only. Space is limited.

Desert Resonator, 2011. Sonic sculpture permanently installed at the CLUI Desert Research Station, Hinkley CA. Deborah Stratman and Steven Badgett.

Framing lines of sight is an unavoidable part of the filmmaking practice. We encircle the gaze with a vectored view and we necessarily remove with every look, editing most of the world out in order to arrive at a shot.  Considering the phenomenological power relationships that are native to this simple act are a central part of Stratman's practice.  Equally central have been a commitment to landscape, infrastructure, socio-political histories and ways of knowing.

The talk will highlight resonances between some of Stratman’s recent (and future) projects and that of Nancy Holt.  In particular, the recent public installations “Desert Resonator” and “Augural Pair,” (collaborations with artist Steven Badgett), and the in-progress “Sinkholes” project. Nancy Holt: Sightlines will be on view at the Graham Foundation from October 7 through December 17, 2011.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker interested in landscapes and systems. Her films, rather than telling stories, pose a series of problems - and through their at times ambiguous nature, allow for a complicated reading of the questions being asked. Many of her films point to the relationships between physical environments and the very human struggles for power, ownership, mastery and control that are played out on the land. Most recently, they have questioned elemental historical narratives about freedom, expansion, security, and the regulation of space. Stratman works in multiple mediums, including photography, sound, drawing and sculpture. She has exhibited internationally at venues including the Whitney Biennial, MoMA, the Pompidou, Hammer Museum and any international film festivals including Sundance, the Viennale, Ann Arbor and Rotterdam. She is the recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships and she currently teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

For more information on the exhibition, Nancy Holt: Sightlines, click here.

Nancy Holt, Preparatory drawing of “Sun Tunnels,” 1975, pencil and twelve black and white photographs on paper, 14 x 20 in.

In conjunction with Nancy Holt: Sightlines, the Graham Foundation will host a panel discussion, artist talk and book signing on October 8th.

4 PM Panel Discussion: The panel will consider the wider influence of Land Art since the 1960s and 70s, and new perspectives on Nancy Holt’s interdisciplinary oeuvre through a critical rethinking of how the field has come to be defined.

Panelists:

Matthew Coolidge is the founder and director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, an education and research organization based in Los Angeles, established in 1994. The work of the Center has been presented in museums, universities, and noncommercial exhibit spaces across the United States, and Europe. Coolidge teaches in the curatorial practice program at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. He is the author and editor of several books, including Overlook: Exploring the Internal Fringes of America with the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Up River: Points of Interest on the Hudson River, and The Nevada Test Site: A Guide to the Nation's Nuclear Proving Ground.

Miwon Kwon is Professor of Contemporary Art History at UCLA. She is the author of One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity (MIT Press, 2002) as well as numerous essays on an international roster of contemporary artists. She is currently organizing a historical survey exhibition with co-curator Philipp Kaiser entitled “Ends of the Earth: Art of the Land to 1974,” scheduled to open at LAMOCA in spring 2012.

Yates McKee is a PhD Candidate in Art History at Columbia University, and he teaches contemporary art at Cooper Union. His work on art, politics, and ecology has appeared in Grey Room, October, Art Journal, Artforum, Oxford Art Journal, Third Text and Texte Zur Kunst. Most recently, he contributed a text to the catalogue for Allora & Calzadilla's United States Pavillion at the 2011 Venice Bienale.

Ann Reynolds is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History and the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her recent publications include essays on Blonde Cobra; Zoe Leonard's So you see I am here after all; Charles Simonds' Urban Dwellings; the politics of emotion; Parker Tyler; and feminist exhibitions and publics circa 1970. She is the author of Robert Smithson: Learning From New Jersey and Elsewhere (MIT Press, 2003) and is currently working on a book project entitled Home Movies: Creativity, Community, and Publics in New York, 1940-1970.

Branden W. Joseph (moderator) is The Frank Gallipoli Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University.  He is the author of Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage (Zone Books, 2008), Anthony McCall: The Solid Light Films and Related Works (Steidl, 2005), and Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde (MIT Press, 2003).  His writings have appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including Grey Room, a journal of architecture, art, media, and politics, published quarterly by MIT Press since 2000, of which he is a founding editor.

Alena J. Williams (Introduction) is the curator of Nancy Holt: Sightlines, the traveling exhibition on Holt's Land art, films, video, and related works from 1966 to 1980. She is a doctoral candidate in modern and contemporary art in Art History at Columbia University. Williams was a fellow in the postgraduate research group “Media of History – History of Media" at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the recipient of the German Chancellor Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. Her publications include Nancy Holt: Sightlines (UC Press, 2011) and Light Is a Kind of Rhythm (merz&solitude, 2009).

7 PM Artist Talk: Nancy Holt will present an artist's talk, which will be followed by a book signing and reception.

"Mining the Wasteland: Land Art's Legacy in Contemporary Art and Politics" is co-presented with The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University.

For more information on the exhibition, Nancy Holt: Sightlines, click here.

Nancy Holt, Views Through a Sand Dune, 1972, cement-asbestos pipe, sand, Narragansett Beach, Rhode Island.

Join us for an opening reception with Nancy Holt and curator Alena J. Williams.

For more information on the exhibition, Nancy Holt: Sightlines, click here.

William Whitaker and Anne Tyng at the opening reception of "Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry," Madlener House, Chicago, 2011 © Graham Foundation. Photo: James Prinz Photography.

Celebrate Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry on its closing day with a talk by William Whitaker. Whitaker, one of the exhibition organizers, will discuss the work of Anne Tyng, who he has worked closely with for many years. Whitaker brought Tyng’s work into the collection of the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania in 2005. A reception in the garden of the Madlener House will follow the event.

William Whitaker is the curator and collections manager of the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania—one of the leading repositories of architectural records in the world. He has organized and co-curated over 30 exhibitions, including retrospectives on Louis I. Kahn, Lawrence Halprin, Robert LeRicolais, Antonin and Noemi Raymond and most recently Wharton Esherick. In addition, Whitaker directed research for the landmark retrospective "Out of the Ordinary: the Architecture and Design of Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown & Associates", organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2000. Trained as an architect, he received his undergraduate degree from the University of New Mexico and Master's from the University of Pennsylvania where he teaches as a visiting lecturer in the Historic Preservation and History of Art departments.

The Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania preserves the works of more than 400 designers from the 18th century to the present. For more information, click here.

For more information on the exhibition, Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry, click here.

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