{"id":4081,"date":"2024-12-24T10:39:44","date_gmt":"2024-12-24T15:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/art-museum\/?p=4081"},"modified":"2024-12-24T16:16:59","modified_gmt":"2024-12-24T21:16:59","slug":"climbing-into-star-crossed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/art-museum\/2024\/12\/climbing-into-star-crossed\/","title":{"rendered":"Climbing into Star-Crossed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Annie Dell\u2019Aria<\/a>, Associate Professor of Art History <\/p>\n\n\n

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A view of Star-Crossed<\/em> through its east-west concrete tunnel. Photo by Annie Dell\u2019Aria<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\"Nancy
Nancy Holt (American 1938-2014), Star-Crossed<\/em>, 1979-1981. Earth, concrete, grass and water. Cooperative effort of Nancy Holt; College of Creative Arts (50th Anniversary); School of Interdisciplinary Studies; Departments of Art, Architecture, and Physical Facilities; Visual Arts Club; Alumni and Development Funds; Miami University Art Museum, Ohio Arts Council; and Walter A. Netch. Donations of time and material by Price Brothers Co., Antenen Construction Co., Sizemore Excavators, and Miami University Grounds and Physical Plant. 1979.S.0.3.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

For anyone who has ventured behind the Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum (RCCAM)<\/a>, the sight of Nancy Holt\u2019s Star-Crossed<\/em> is a puzzling surprise. These intersecting tubes of concrete, topped by an unruly mound of earth and grass, seem out of place next to the woods and set among the pristinely mowed rolling hills of grass set against the sleek angles of the RCCAM building. Venturing down the steep slope, the structure becomes enterable, causing voices to echo and cooling the air. The smaller, angled tunnel points towards an elliptical indentation in the ground\u2014an empty, cracked, and overgrown reflection pool. From atop this curious mound, this shape appears to morph into a circle that aligns perfectly with the round tunnel\u2019s aperture. From the ground, the tunnel frames a vignette of the sky, like an archaic telescope marking a point in the heavens.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Nancy Holt during the construction of Star-Crossed. <\/em>RCCAM Archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This curious structure is the work of American artist Nancy Holt (1938-2014), one of the most significant practitioners of Land Art. Emerging out of the tumultuous decade of the 1960s, Land Art sought to move beyond the walls of the art gallery and make the earth itself into a sculptural medium. Artists like Michael Heizer (b. 1944) and Robert Smithson (1938-1973) turned to bulldozers and dynamite to make massive sculptures in remote locations in the American southwest. Holt\u2019s contributions to the field maintained a photographer\u2019s interest in optics and encouraged viewers to look up to the sky as much as feel the manipulation of the earth. Sun Tunnels<\/em> (1973-1976), perhaps her most famous piece, achieves this through punctures in the tunnels\u2019 walls to project abstractions of constellations onto the ground inside the cooling, strange comfort of these industrial forms set out in the Great Utah Basin Desert. This work skyrocketed Holt\u2019s artworld fame as it was featured on the cover of the major art magazine Artforum<\/em> in 1977. At the end of the fall semester of 1978, students and faculty in Miami\u2019s Department of Architecture, led by Tom Bible, invited Holt to come to campus for a week-long residency. What followed was a four-year relationship that saw Holt visit campus multiple times, create two original sculptures (Star-Crossed <\/em>as well as the now-destroyed Polar Circle <\/em>(1979)), and collaborate with faculty, students, and heavy machine operators here in Oxford.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Concrete forms for support of North-West pipe poured on November 2, 1979 – Photo from RCCAM archives, Miami University.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Seams of East-West pipe patched with tar paper, November 5, 1979 – Photo from RCCAM archives, Miami University.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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A selection of the archives related to Nancy Holt\u2019s Star-Crossed <\/em>being researched in RCCAM\u2019s Study Room, summer 2023 (Photo by Annie Dell\u2018Aria)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Interested in this sculpture ever since I arrived at Miami to teach Modern and Contemporary Art in 2016, I was curious to know more about this process and how this sculpture connected with the history of this place. Supported by a research fellowship from the Holt\/Smithson Foundation<\/a> in the summer of 2023, I combed materials at both the Smithsonian Archives of American Art<\/a> and RCCAM\u2019s archives at Miami University. This included correspondence dating back to the initial invitation, Holt\u2019s sketches and notebooks, bills and regulations, and the first-person account documented in (now retired) Art History Professor Clive Getty\u2019s notebooks. This research resulted in two public lectures and a formal report, as well as on-going plans for a book and scholarly article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the cut-out constellations in her famous Sun Tunnels<\/em>, Star-Crossed<\/em> similarly \u201cbrings the sky down to the earth,\u201d in Holt\u2019s words, as its telescopic tunnel frames Polaris\u2014the north star\u2014making the entire structure into a compass of sorts. During one of her many visits to Miami\u2019s campus, Holt discovered that in Oxford, magnetic and astronomical north actually align, which she read as an auspicious sign for the work\u2019s success. Ideally, this slice of sky would reflect in the oblong pool, but issues with drainage and the passage of time have made this component of the work into more of an accidental ruin than a functioning waterwork. Also likely unintended by many of those present at that auspicious discovery in 1979, magnetic north shifts overtime, meaning its astronomical alignment is somewhat of a time-capsule of this place in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the years when the structure was designed, stalled, started, rebuilt, and completed. Aside from the empty pool, the work is in good condition today, and visitors can climb and safely enter the sculpture. The RCCAM team is working to conserve the pipes for future generations and exploring options for the reflecting pool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To my thinking, the complete story of Star-Crossed<\/em> is then a snapshot of multiple transitions. As an institution, Miami was expanding onto the grounds of the recently closed Western College for Women; and higher education itself was shifting towards a model more informed by private sector marketing than public service missions. For Holt, she made this work on the heels of her breakout success with Sun Tunnels<\/em> and just before completing her major urban commission Dark Star Park<\/em> (1979-1984, Arlington, VA). The archives tell a story of one of the few land artists to successfully shift from remote landscapes to urban parks and university campuses. It also tells the story of a woman struggling to carve a place for herself in the field while simultaneously managing the estate and legacy of Land Art\u2019s brightest star, her recently deceased husband, Robert Smithson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Nancy
Nancy Holt (American, 1938-2014) Star-Crossed Rendering<\/em>, 1978-1979 (possibly March 1979). Ink, graphite, and tape on paper, 18 x 50 inches. Partial gift from the Holt\/Smithson Foundation with contributions from the Orpha Webster Art Fund. 2024.27. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Not only one of Miami\u2019s most significant works of art in its collection, Star-Crossed<\/em> is an important work of American art and a fascinating case study on the history of universities and the shifting landscape for women sculptors in the late twentieth century.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Annie Dell\u2019Aria<\/a> is Associate Professor of Art History and teaches courses on Modern and Contemporary Art. She earned her A.B. from Harvard University and Ph.D. from The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the author of the book The Moving Image as Public Art: Sidewalk Spectators and Modes of Enchantment<\/em> (2021) as well as a number of articles and book chapters on topics ranging from the public art in the television series Parks and Rec<\/em> to the role of touch in contemporary video art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nancy Holt (American 1938-2014), Star-Crossed, 1979-1981. Earth, concrete, grass and water. Cooperative effort of Nancy Holt; College of Creative Arts (50th Anniversary); School of Interdisciplinary Studies; Departments of Art, Architecture, and Physical Facilities; Visual Arts Club; Alumni and Development Funds; Miami University Art Museum, Ohio Arts Council; and Walter A. Netch. Donations of time and material by Price Brothers Co., Antenen Construction Co., Sizemore Excavators, and Miami University Grounds and Physical Plant. 1979.S.0.3.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1564,"featured_media":4083,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[43,42,85,50,84],"tags":[88,87,86,89],"class_list":["post-4081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist-features","category-collections","category-faculty","category-highlights","category-sculpture","tag-annie-dellaria","tag-nancy-holt","tag-sculpture","tag-star-crossed"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/art-museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/art-museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/art-museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/art-museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1564"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/art-museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/art-museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/art-museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/art-museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/art-museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/art-museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}