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Nancy Holt

Born 1938 - Worcester, Massachusetts
Died 2014

Nancy Holt studied at Tufts University in Massachusetts. In the mid-60s, Holt helped introduce a post-minimalist sensibility to the field of sculpture. She used video for the first time in 1969 "when Peter Campus rented a video camera and came over." 

"There was a tremendous sense of discovery because it was so accessible and so Bob [Smithson] and I immediately did a work of art. We invited a large group of people over to our loft that night, including Richard Serra, Michael Heizer, Nancy Graves, and Keith Sonnier to see it. It was very unusual [to] discover a medium, make a work of art and show it in the same day. That broke the ice and gave me a sense of what it was about—what were film ideas and what were video ideas." 

Holt's early tapes, like her site-specific sculptures, explore the recorded experience of a particular time and place and the function of memory in perception. Holt's tapes twist the technical limits of video, calling attention to the medium's artificial nature, and maintaining a critical distance between public presentation and private reality.

 


Available Titles by Nancy Holt

Title Year Runtime Collection
Art in the Public Eye: The Making of Dark Star Park 1988 00:33:00 On Art and Artists, Single Titles
Breaking Ground: Broken Circle/Spiral Hill 2011 00:20:56 New Releases, Single Titles
East Coast, West Coast 1969 00:22:00 Early Video Art, Single Titles
The Electric Mirror: Reflecting on Video Art in the 1970s 2017 Compilations, Curated Compilations
Going Around in Circles 1973 00:15:15 Early Video Art, Single Titles
Revolve 1977 01:16:52 Early Video Art, Single Titles
Underscan 1974 00:09:20 Early Video Art, Single Titles
Zeroing In 1973 00:31:15 Early Video Art, Single Titles

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Nancy Holt 1938-2014

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