Time Trip Resources

University of Utah

UMFA

J. Willard Marriott Library 

Utah

Westminster University

National/International  

Dia Art Foundation 

Holt Smithson Foundation

Archives of American Art 

Kent State University 

In Print 

  • Lawrence Alloway. “Robert Smithson’s Development.” Artforum 11, no. 3 (November 1972): 52-61
  • Guglielmo Bergellesi-Severi, ed. Robert Smithson Slideworks. Verona: Carlo Frua, 1997
  • Amanda Boetzkes. The Ethics of Earth Art. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2010
  • Kenneth Clark. Landscape into Art. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961
  • Lynne Cooke and Karen Kelly, eds. Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty: True Fictions, False Realities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005
  • Matthew Coolidge and Sarah Simons, eds. Overlook: Exploring the Internal Fringes of American with the Center for Land Use Interpretation. New York: Metropolis Books, 2006
  • Hikmet Doğu. “An Intermittent Illusion: Local Reaction to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty.” Master’s thesis, Hunter College, City University of New York, 1996
  • Elyse Goldberg and Julia Sprinkel, eds. Robert Smithson: Mapping Dislocations. New York: James Cohan Gallery, 2001
  • Robert Hobbs. Robert Smithson: A Retrospective View. Ithaca, NY: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 1983
  • Robert Smithson: Sculpture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981
  • Nancy Holt. “Sun Tunnels.” Artforum 15, no. 1 (April 1977): 32-37
  • Philipp Kaiser and Miwon Kwon. Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974. London: Prestel Munich, 2012
  • Gyorgy Kepes, ed. Arts of the Environment. New York: George Braziller, 1972
  • Philip Leider. “How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Or, Art and Politics in Nevada, Berkeley, San Francisco and Utah,” Artforum 9, no. 1 (September 1970): 40-49
  • Hikmet Sidney Loe. “The Hotel Palenque: Robert Smithson’s 1972 Utah Lecture.” Western Humanities Review 68, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 68-69
  • The Spiral Jetty Encyclo: Exploring Robert Smithson’s Earthwork through Time and Place. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2017
  • Grégoire Müller. The New Avant-Garde: Issues for the Art of the Seventies. New York: Praeger, 1972
  • “The Earth, Subject to Cataclysms, is a Cruel Master.” Arts Magazine 46, no. 2 (November 1971): 36-41
  • Serge Paul. “Reshaping Time: Robert Smithson’s Earth Art as a Denial of History.” Interfaces: Image Text Language 19/20 (2002): 67-98
  • Ann Reynolds. Robert Smithson: Learning from New Jersey and Elsewhere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003
  • Anthony Robbin. “Robert Smithson’s Non-site Sights.” Art News 67, no. 10 (February 1969): 50
  • Gerry Schum and Ursula Schum-Wevers, eds. Land Art: Fernsehausstellung Land Art, Television Gallery. Berlin: Fernsehgalerie Garry Schum, 1969
  • Land Art. Fersehgalerie Gerry Schum. Hanover: Hartwig Popp, 1970
  • Gary Shapiro. Earthwards: Robert Smithson and Life after Babel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995
  • Alison Sky. “Entropy Made Visible.” On Site 4 (Fall 1973): 26-30
  • Robert Smithson in Texas: An Exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art. New York; Shanghai: Estate of Robert Smithson, James Cohan Gallery, and the Dallas Museum of Art, 2015
  • Robert Smithson. “A Cinematic Atopia.” Artforum 10, no. 1 (September 1971): 53-55
  • “Entropy and the New Monuments.” Artforum 5, no. 10 (June 1966): 9-18
  • “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan.” Artforum 8, no. 1 (September 1969): 28-33
  • “Insert Robert Smithson: Hotel Palenque, 1969-72.” Parkett 43 (March 1995): 117-32 
  • “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects.” Artforum 7, no. 1 (September 1968): 44-50
  • Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, ed. Jack Flam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996
  • “Strata: A Geophotographic Fiction.” Aspen no. 8 (Fall/Winter 1970-71): 129-31
  • Jennifer Roberts. Mirror Travels: Robert Smithson and History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004
  • Valentin Tatransky. “Catalogue of Robert Smithson’s Library: Books, Magazines, and Records.” In Robert Smithson, Eugenie Tsai and Cornelia Butler, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2004
  • Calvin Tompkins. “Onward and Upward with the Arts: Maybe a Quantum Leap.” New Yorker 47, no. 51 (February 5, 1972): 42-67 
  • Eugenie Tsai. Robert Smithson Unearthed: Drawings, Collages, Writings New York: Columbia University Press, 1991
  • Eugenie Tsai and Cornelia Butler, eds. Robert Smithson. Berkeley: University of California Press and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2004
  • Phyllis Tuchman. Robert Smithson’s New Jersey. Montclair, NJ: Montclair Art Museum, 2014
  • Alena J. Williams. Nancy Holt: Sightlines. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011

Curator's Note about Time Trip

Time Trip was originally conceived as a physical exhibition, slated to debut just as Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty slid into its fiftieth year along Utah's Great Salt Lake. That same year - 2020 - evolved into an unforgettable global moment all its own. While cancelling the exhibition in the wake of COVID-19 was among the smaller disappointments to mark that time, our team held on to the hope that we might find another venue to share the oft-overlooked story of Utah's embeddedness in contemporary culture during the era that Robert Smithson periodically visited our state.

Transforming Time Trip into a digital setting was not without its challenges, as we discovered that such an endeavor used resources, timelines, and procedures that were often outside our comfort zones. But it also opened up new possibilities: the virtual space enabled us to use the UMFA's and J. Willard Marriott Library's collections in a way that a physical setting wouldn't allow - either because the material exceeded the space of a single case, wall, or gallery, or because the object was too light-sensitive or otherwise physically fragile to be put on exhibition for too long, or because the casing requirements involved in displaying a multipage, multi-sided document presented a logistical nightmare. The virtual space became increasingly appealing as we considered that the potential audience for the exhibition would not be limited to the select individuals who were able to visit the Museum in person during the course of a single exhibit.

Perhaps the most compelling prospect for Time Trip's transformation into a digital exhibition is that it can - and ideally will - evolve over time. It is understood that new material may be added - new narratives may emerge. In this sense, Time Trip takes a cue from Smithson. Its propensity to change is built-in, assumed. And with the art and archival material that the exhibition is drawn from, how could it be otherwise? 

Time Trip would not have been possible without a few key people. First among them is Jessica Breiman, Art and Archives Metadata Librarian at the J. Willard Marriott Library, who has worked as the archivist on this project. Without her research and dedication, this project would not be half of what it is. Credit is also due to Annie Burbidge Ream, Co-Director of Learning and Engagement, K-12 and Family Programs, and Whitney Tassie, Senior Curator and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, whose insight into access and expertise on Smithson have been utterly invaluable throughout. UMFA Exhibitions Designer Sarah Palmer did a stunning job envisioning the 1.0 version of Time Trip. Adelaide Ryder, UMFA Digital Projects Manager, and Emma Ryder, UMFA Digital Media Coordinator, were equally skilled in the delicate task of translating its narrative into a virtual space - I am immeasurably indebted to you both for working with me through this process, and owe you every dinner in the world. Finally, Joy Goh, UMFA Graphic Designer, thoughtfully created visuals inspired by archival images we shared with her. All of this was made possible with funding through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

In retrospect, it seems fitting that Time Trip was originally planned to be shown at the Marcia and John Price Building that houses the present-day location of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts: the building is sited just a few hundred yards from where many of the events covered in the exhibition took place. Echoes of Utah's seventies culture remains around campus, but were it not for my encounter with the archival material housed at the University of Utah - only a small sampling of which is shown here - I might be more inclined to overlook many of those tracings. Such is the joy of archives: discovering that the present and the past aren't, exactly. It is my sincere hope that Time Trip will elicit your curiosity and encourage you to do some exploring of your own.

-Alana Wolf, Collections Resource Curator, somewhere in mid-2021