At the Rizzoli Bookstore launch of Inside the Spiral, photograph by Daniel Root/The Root Group
Podcasts on Inside the Spiral
Lectures
“Robert Smithson at the Art Students League and Early Drawings: Angels, Babes, and Beefcakes,” Art Students League, Manhattan, January 2024
“Underground Before Earthworks: Robert Smithson’s Concealed Paintings,” The Research Forum of The Courtauld, London, October 2023
“‘Posters from Hell’: Robert Smithson’s Concealed Paintings,” School of Visual Arts, Manhattan, October 2023
“Underground Before Earthworks: Robert Smithson’s Concealed Paintings,” Rhinecliff Memorial Library, Rhinecliff, NY, July 2023
“Dark Sister: Robert Smithson's Images of Feminized Masculinities” College Art Association conference, February 2023
“Nancy Holt: Apertures as Autobiography,” Western Washington University symposium in conjunction with exhibition “Nancy Holt, Between Heaven and Earth,” Western Gallery, Western Washington University, April 2022
“Land Art’s Evolving Relationship to Environmentalism,” The Nevada Museum of Art triennial 2021 Art + Environment Season: Land Art: Past, Present, Futures, November 2021, by Zoom.
“Brother’s Keeper: Artist Robert Smithson’s Manifestations of the Replacement Child Experience,” Silberger Award talk, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, May, 2021, by Zoom
“Conceptual Art's Constriction of Interiority; Robert Smithson, Confined,” College Art Association conference session on “Conceptual Art’s Constriction of Identity,” February 2021, by Zoom
“The Angel’s Advocate: Robert Smithson’s Drawings of Erotes (1961-1964),” hosted by The Drawing Institute, The Menil Collection, conference of Midwest Art History Society, March 2020, canceled due to virus
"Contextualizing the Confounding: Robert Smithson’s “Don’t be afraid of the word ‘religion,’” seminar on American Art, the Newberry Library, Chicago, November 2019
“Collecting Experiences: ‘Owning’ Environmental Sculpture,” Keynote Speaker, symposium, Frick Collection Art Reference Library Center for Collecting, “Collecting the ‘Uncollectible’: Earth and Site-Specific Art” May 2019
‘Drunk on Blood:’ A Visual and Verbal Artery through Robert Smithson’s Corpus,” Conference of Association of Art Historians, Great Britain, April 2019
“‘Life in the Lower Depths:’ The Postapocalyptic Undergrounds of the ProtoPostmodernist Robert Smithson, Early 1960s,” conference Waiting for the End of the World: Eschatology and Art 1939-Present, co-sponsored by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA) and the Department of Art History, College of Arts & Sciences, New York University, February 2019.
"Dennis Oppenheim: Recollections and Reflections on his work in the great ‘Terrestrial Studio." Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York, October 2016
“Affective Environmentalism in Contemporary Sculpture & Photography.” Art Department and University Art Museum, University of Wyoming, Laramie, September 2016
“Imaging Topography in/as the Anthropocene.” Symposium: From a "Topographic" to an "Environmental" Understanding of Space,” Museum for Photography, Braunsweig, Germany, October 2015
“Of Our Time: Artists’ Representations of the Anthropocene,” lecture to graduate seminar at SUNY Purchase March 2015 and to an undergraduate class at Drew University April 2015
“This Changes Some Things: ‘Social’ Practice and the Anthropocene,” College Art Association conference panel on “The Ethics of Social Practice,” New York, February 2015
“Shock & Awe: Environmentalist Art’s Representation of the Anthropocene,” Atkinson Symposium, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, in conjunction with exhibition “Beyond Earth Art,” April 2014
“Nature Calls: Artists’ Engagement with Environmental Threats,” Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, FL and Boca Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL, January 2014
“Modern Earth Mothers: Gender Convergence in Recent Environmentalist Art,” Berkeley [CA] Art Center, January 2011
“Environmentalism: What’s Art Got to Do With It?” New York Studio School, October 2010
“Dirt into Earth: Transformations in the Material and Cultural Construction of Nature in Environmental Art Since the Sixties,” Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany, August, 2009
"Modern Earth Mothers: Environments by Women Sculptors" and "Maya Lin’s Storm King Wavefield as Environmental Art" Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY, May and June 2009
"Women, Art and Nature: The Rising Ecofeminist Consciousness in Contemporary Art," Celebration of Women's History Month, invited convocation speaker, Holon, Israel, March 2008
"Behind the Enantiomorph: Biographical Keys to Robert Smithson's References to Doubling and to Death," NURTUREArt Gallery, Brooklyn, March 2008
“Robert Smithson,” Roger Smith Hotel Salon, New York City, September 30, 2005
“Grandeur and Dirt: Earthworks in/as the Sixties,” symposium on 35th Anniversary of Robert Smithson’s Buried Woodshed, Kent State University; April 2005, and at Art History Association, SUNY New Paltz, April 2005
"Life and Death on the Table: Two Millennia of Still Life," Jackson Heights Arts Club, March 2005
“Thicker than Water: Smithson’s Spiraling Return in the Red Sea,” College Art Association conference, February 2005, given at New York Studio School, November 2005
Respondent to College Art Association session “Rebels with a Cause or The Wounded Generation: Revisiting Vietnam Era Art and its Contemporary Revisions,” February 2004
“Visionary Earthworks in the Sixties, An Overview,” North Carolina Museum of Art, June 2004
"Mother Dearest? Earthworks’ Relation to Nature and to Politics," Storm King Art Center, November 2003, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 2003; Rutgers University/Newark, April 2003
“Earthworks: Art and Nature,” Queensborough Public Library, Bayside, September 2003
“From Earthworks to Abakanowicz: Environmental Sculpture In, Of, and On the Earth,” Grounds for Sculpture, New Jersey June 2003
“New Yorkers' Earthworks The West as Source,” The Museum of California, Oakland and San Francisco Art Institute, May 2003
“15,000 Years of Bovines in Art: What Cows Can Tell us About Art History,” Jackson Heights Art Club, March, 2003
“Down and Dirty: Material Resistence in the Late Sixties,” College Art Association conference, February 2003
“Heizer's Depressions, Smithson's Upside Down Trees, and other Earthworks as Ambivalent Pastorals,” New York Studio School January 2003
“Carl Andre's Work on the Floor and on the Earth” followed by a conversation with the artist, NYU School of Art and Art Professions, November 2002
“Embracing the World Sculpture’s 20th Century Expansion into Installation Art” Six-part lecture series, Queens Museum, July-August 2001
“The Call of the Wild Earthworks and Land Art,” sculpture symposium “On Fertile Ground” sponsored by Long House Reserve and American Ceramics magazine May 2000
“Countering Culture? Sixties’ Earth Art’s Ambiguous Status as Commodity” American Culture Association/Popular Culture Association Conference, April 2000
“Mother Dearest? Pastoral Longing and the Interpretation of Earthworks” College Art Association Conference, re “Landscape and Ecology in Historical Perspective,” February 2000
"The Complexities of Wholeness Francesco Clemente's Self-Portraits," Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in conjunction with Clemente exhibition, October 1999
“Virginia Dwan Earthworks’ Goddess & Godmother,” conference on Women as Patrons and Collectors of Art, New York Public Library March 1999
“'Lurking Primeval Animism' Robert Smithson's Pollock,” Pollock-Krasner House, The Springs, New York August 1998
“Patricia Johanson: Revising the Woman-As-Nature Position”Symposium on Women-Land-Design sponsored by University of Florida Department of Landscape Architecture and Preservation Institute, Nantucket, May 1998
“Selling Land Art Earthworks, Ownership, and the Collective Domain” CUNY National Symposium on “Collections, Collectivity,”April 1997
“Twentieth-Century Sculpture Mirror with a Thousand Faces,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, re Nasher sculpture collection, March 1997
"Androgynous Sources of Ecological Public Art," American Studies Conference, November 1993
“What a Doll, Questioning Eastman Johnson's Blodgett Family," College Art Association Conference, session on "Re-Encountering American 'Realism,'" February 1992, given at New York Studio School January 1993
"The Starn Twins Phenomenon," San Francisco Psychoanalytic Association, February 1989
"The Phenomenology of Walter De Maria's Site Works" Annual Symposium on Contemporary Art, sponsored by Rutgers University and Fashion Inst./Technology, October 1988
"Art Imagery & Dreams," San Francisco Art Institute, September 1986, and Humboldt State University, Arcata, California, December 1986
“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Critic's Perspective on Evaluating Recent Art.” St. Mary's College lecture series, Understanding Contemporary Art, February 1985
"Regionalism Re-Examined Is There a Characteristic Spirit in Bay Area Art?" Santa Barbara Museum of Art, July 1984
“Post-Modernism and Regionalism in Bay Area Art,” Vorpal Gallery, April 1984
Art in Public Places What's It Doing There?" San Francisco Art Commission Lecture Series, March 1984
“Issues in Contemporary Geometric Abstraction,,” Civic Arts Gallery, Walnut Creek, California, April 1983
“The Emergence and Variety of Land Projects,” La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, August 1981
“The Artist and the Critic How Can We Help Each Other?” Pacific Basin Textile Arts, April 1981
“Robert Smithson and the Development of Earthworks,” Art Department, California State University at Chico, February 1981
“Picasso's Minotaur Surrealist Symbol of Transformation,” Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, symposium on “Metamorphosis,” May 1980
“Late 18th Century Portraiture of Women at Intellectual Work,” University of California, Los Angeles, Graduate Student Symposium, April 1980
“Earthworks and Michael Heizer,” The Oakland Museum, for docents, January 1980
Panels Organized and Moderated
“Mix Masters: Disguised Allusions to Blended gender and Intersexuality in Modern Art,” College Art Association annual meeting, February 16, 2023 New York Hilton Midtown, Sixth Avenue/53rd Street, Gibson Suite.
“Robert Smithson’s Dialectics of Death and Creativity,” College Art Association annual meeting, February 2005
“Earthworks/Earth Art/Ecologic Art: Re-Viewing the Emergence of Art in the Environment,” Artists Talk on Art, NYC, March 2003
“Artists as Readers: Texts as Contexts," College Art Association annual meeting, February 1997
"Decorating the Augean Stables? Uses of Reclamation in Public Art: Precedents, Practices, Proposals," College Art Association annual meeting, February 1993
"The Newly Mediated Landscape," Artists Talk on Art, NYC, December 1988
“Bay Area Art Contributions to Post-Modernism,” San Francisco Art Institute, June 1984
“Forum on Bay Area Art Criticism: Artistic Diversity and Critical Response,” co-coordinator and moderator, organized by national Women's Caucus for Art, November 1981
Participation on Panel Discussions
“Exhibiting Collapse: Climate Changes in the Artworld,” The Armory Art Fair, NYC, March 2015
Respondent, “Intervention and Embeddedness: Art Practice and Environmental Discourse,” Association of American Geographers annual meeting, February 2012
"Exhibition Review" discussed current art from the stage, National Academy (NYC), April, 2007
"Artists and Environmentalists A Dialogue" A.I.R. Gallery, NYC, March 1994
"Subject Into Object Rethinking Still Life" Rosa Esman Gallery, New York, January 1990
Critics' Discussion, opening exhibition "Awards for the Visual Arts," Albright-Knox Museum of Art, Buffalo, May 1985
“Criticism and Regional Publications.” National Consortium of Visual Arts Coordinators, Chicago
“Criticism Decentralized.” First National Conference, American Section of International Association of Art Critics,” New York City, February 1983
“Fiber into Print,” Fiberworks, Kala Institute and The Oakland Museum, January 1983
“The Ethics of Reviewing Local Arts.” Media Alliance, San Francisco, October 1982
“Criticism of Sculpture in a Public Context,” International Sculpture Conference, August 1982
“The Responsibility of Critics to Social Change,” Art Works for the People conference, San Francisco, May 1982
Discussion of “Forum on Bay Area Art Criticism,” KPFA radio, Berkeley, arts program with Jane Hall January 1982
Representative of art criticism on “Careers in the Arts for Women,” Stanford University, December 1981
Podcasts on Inside the Spiral
Lectures
“Robert Smithson at the Art Students League and Early Drawings: Angels, Babes, and Beefcakes,” Art Students League, Manhattan, January 2024
“Underground Before Earthworks: Robert Smithson’s Concealed Paintings,” The Research Forum of The Courtauld, London, October 2023
“‘Posters from Hell’: Robert Smithson’s Concealed Paintings,” School of Visual Arts, Manhattan, October 2023
“Underground Before Earthworks: Robert Smithson’s Concealed Paintings,” Rhinecliff Memorial Library, Rhinecliff, NY, July 2023
“Dark Sister: Robert Smithson's Images of Feminized Masculinities” College Art Association conference, February 2023
“Nancy Holt: Apertures as Autobiography,” Western Washington University symposium in conjunction with exhibition “Nancy Holt, Between Heaven and Earth,” Western Gallery, Western Washington University, April 2022
“Land Art’s Evolving Relationship to Environmentalism,” The Nevada Museum of Art triennial 2021 Art + Environment Season: Land Art: Past, Present, Futures, November 2021, by Zoom.
“Brother’s Keeper: Artist Robert Smithson’s Manifestations of the Replacement Child Experience,” Silberger Award talk, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, May, 2021, by Zoom
“Conceptual Art's Constriction of Interiority; Robert Smithson, Confined,” College Art Association conference session on “Conceptual Art’s Constriction of Identity,” February 2021, by Zoom
“The Angel’s Advocate: Robert Smithson’s Drawings of Erotes (1961-1964),” hosted by The Drawing Institute, The Menil Collection, conference of Midwest Art History Society, March 2020, canceled due to virus
"Contextualizing the Confounding: Robert Smithson’s “Don’t be afraid of the word ‘religion,’” seminar on American Art, the Newberry Library, Chicago, November 2019
“Collecting Experiences: ‘Owning’ Environmental Sculpture,” Keynote Speaker, symposium, Frick Collection Art Reference Library Center for Collecting, “Collecting the ‘Uncollectible’: Earth and Site-Specific Art” May 2019
‘Drunk on Blood:’ A Visual and Verbal Artery through Robert Smithson’s Corpus,” Conference of Association of Art Historians, Great Britain, April 2019
“‘Life in the Lower Depths:’ The Postapocalyptic Undergrounds of the ProtoPostmodernist Robert Smithson, Early 1960s,” conference Waiting for the End of the World: Eschatology and Art 1939-Present, co-sponsored by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA) and the Department of Art History, College of Arts & Sciences, New York University, February 2019.
"Dennis Oppenheim: Recollections and Reflections on his work in the great ‘Terrestrial Studio." Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York, October 2016
“Affective Environmentalism in Contemporary Sculpture & Photography.” Art Department and University Art Museum, University of Wyoming, Laramie, September 2016
“Imaging Topography in/as the Anthropocene.” Symposium: From a "Topographic" to an "Environmental" Understanding of Space,” Museum for Photography, Braunsweig, Germany, October 2015
“Of Our Time: Artists’ Representations of the Anthropocene,” lecture to graduate seminar at SUNY Purchase March 2015 and to an undergraduate class at Drew University April 2015
“This Changes Some Things: ‘Social’ Practice and the Anthropocene,” College Art Association conference panel on “The Ethics of Social Practice,” New York, February 2015
“Shock & Awe: Environmentalist Art’s Representation of the Anthropocene,” Atkinson Symposium, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, in conjunction with exhibition “Beyond Earth Art,” April 2014
“Nature Calls: Artists’ Engagement with Environmental Threats,” Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, FL and Boca Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL, January 2014
“Modern Earth Mothers: Gender Convergence in Recent Environmentalist Art,” Berkeley [CA] Art Center, January 2011
“Environmentalism: What’s Art Got to Do With It?” New York Studio School, October 2010
“Dirt into Earth: Transformations in the Material and Cultural Construction of Nature in Environmental Art Since the Sixties,” Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany, August, 2009
"Modern Earth Mothers: Environments by Women Sculptors" and "Maya Lin’s Storm King Wavefield as Environmental Art" Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY, May and June 2009
"Women, Art and Nature: The Rising Ecofeminist Consciousness in Contemporary Art," Celebration of Women's History Month, invited convocation speaker, Holon, Israel, March 2008
"Behind the Enantiomorph: Biographical Keys to Robert Smithson's References to Doubling and to Death," NURTUREArt Gallery, Brooklyn, March 2008
“Robert Smithson,” Roger Smith Hotel Salon, New York City, September 30, 2005
“Grandeur and Dirt: Earthworks in/as the Sixties,” symposium on 35th Anniversary of Robert Smithson’s Buried Woodshed, Kent State University; April 2005, and at Art History Association, SUNY New Paltz, April 2005
"Life and Death on the Table: Two Millennia of Still Life," Jackson Heights Arts Club, March 2005
“Thicker than Water: Smithson’s Spiraling Return in the Red Sea,” College Art Association conference, February 2005, given at New York Studio School, November 2005
Respondent to College Art Association session “Rebels with a Cause or The Wounded Generation: Revisiting Vietnam Era Art and its Contemporary Revisions,” February 2004
“Visionary Earthworks in the Sixties, An Overview,” North Carolina Museum of Art, June 2004
"Mother Dearest? Earthworks’ Relation to Nature and to Politics," Storm King Art Center, November 2003, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 2003; Rutgers University/Newark, April 2003
“Earthworks: Art and Nature,” Queensborough Public Library, Bayside, September 2003
“From Earthworks to Abakanowicz: Environmental Sculpture In, Of, and On the Earth,” Grounds for Sculpture, New Jersey June 2003
“New Yorkers' Earthworks The West as Source,” The Museum of California, Oakland and San Francisco Art Institute, May 2003
“15,000 Years of Bovines in Art: What Cows Can Tell us About Art History,” Jackson Heights Art Club, March, 2003
“Down and Dirty: Material Resistence in the Late Sixties,” College Art Association conference, February 2003
“Heizer's Depressions, Smithson's Upside Down Trees, and other Earthworks as Ambivalent Pastorals,” New York Studio School January 2003
“Carl Andre's Work on the Floor and on the Earth” followed by a conversation with the artist, NYU School of Art and Art Professions, November 2002
“Embracing the World Sculpture’s 20th Century Expansion into Installation Art” Six-part lecture series, Queens Museum, July-August 2001
“The Call of the Wild Earthworks and Land Art,” sculpture symposium “On Fertile Ground” sponsored by Long House Reserve and American Ceramics magazine May 2000
“Countering Culture? Sixties’ Earth Art’s Ambiguous Status as Commodity” American Culture Association/Popular Culture Association Conference, April 2000
“Mother Dearest? Pastoral Longing and the Interpretation of Earthworks” College Art Association Conference, re “Landscape and Ecology in Historical Perspective,” February 2000
"The Complexities of Wholeness Francesco Clemente's Self-Portraits," Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in conjunction with Clemente exhibition, October 1999
“Virginia Dwan Earthworks’ Goddess & Godmother,” conference on Women as Patrons and Collectors of Art, New York Public Library March 1999
“'Lurking Primeval Animism' Robert Smithson's Pollock,” Pollock-Krasner House, The Springs, New York August 1998
“Patricia Johanson: Revising the Woman-As-Nature Position”Symposium on Women-Land-Design sponsored by University of Florida Department of Landscape Architecture and Preservation Institute, Nantucket, May 1998
“Selling Land Art Earthworks, Ownership, and the Collective Domain” CUNY National Symposium on “Collections, Collectivity,”April 1997
“Twentieth-Century Sculpture Mirror with a Thousand Faces,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, re Nasher sculpture collection, March 1997
"Androgynous Sources of Ecological Public Art," American Studies Conference, November 1993
“What a Doll, Questioning Eastman Johnson's Blodgett Family," College Art Association Conference, session on "Re-Encountering American 'Realism,'" February 1992, given at New York Studio School January 1993
"The Starn Twins Phenomenon," San Francisco Psychoanalytic Association, February 1989
"The Phenomenology of Walter De Maria's Site Works" Annual Symposium on Contemporary Art, sponsored by Rutgers University and Fashion Inst./Technology, October 1988
"Art Imagery & Dreams," San Francisco Art Institute, September 1986, and Humboldt State University, Arcata, California, December 1986
“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Critic's Perspective on Evaluating Recent Art.” St. Mary's College lecture series, Understanding Contemporary Art, February 1985
"Regionalism Re-Examined Is There a Characteristic Spirit in Bay Area Art?" Santa Barbara Museum of Art, July 1984
“Post-Modernism and Regionalism in Bay Area Art,” Vorpal Gallery, April 1984
Art in Public Places What's It Doing There?" San Francisco Art Commission Lecture Series, March 1984
“Issues in Contemporary Geometric Abstraction,,” Civic Arts Gallery, Walnut Creek, California, April 1983
“The Emergence and Variety of Land Projects,” La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, August 1981
“The Artist and the Critic How Can We Help Each Other?” Pacific Basin Textile Arts, April 1981
“Robert Smithson and the Development of Earthworks,” Art Department, California State University at Chico, February 1981
“Picasso's Minotaur Surrealist Symbol of Transformation,” Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, symposium on “Metamorphosis,” May 1980
“Late 18th Century Portraiture of Women at Intellectual Work,” University of California, Los Angeles, Graduate Student Symposium, April 1980
“Earthworks and Michael Heizer,” The Oakland Museum, for docents, January 1980
Panels Organized and Moderated
“Mix Masters: Disguised Allusions to Blended gender and Intersexuality in Modern Art,” College Art Association annual meeting, February 16, 2023 New York Hilton Midtown, Sixth Avenue/53rd Street, Gibson Suite.
“Robert Smithson’s Dialectics of Death and Creativity,” College Art Association annual meeting, February 2005
“Earthworks/Earth Art/Ecologic Art: Re-Viewing the Emergence of Art in the Environment,” Artists Talk on Art, NYC, March 2003
“Artists as Readers: Texts as Contexts," College Art Association annual meeting, February 1997
"Decorating the Augean Stables? Uses of Reclamation in Public Art: Precedents, Practices, Proposals," College Art Association annual meeting, February 1993
"The Newly Mediated Landscape," Artists Talk on Art, NYC, December 1988
“Bay Area Art Contributions to Post-Modernism,” San Francisco Art Institute, June 1984
“Forum on Bay Area Art Criticism: Artistic Diversity and Critical Response,” co-coordinator and moderator, organized by national Women's Caucus for Art, November 1981
Participation on Panel Discussions
“Exhibiting Collapse: Climate Changes in the Artworld,” The Armory Art Fair, NYC, March 2015
Respondent, “Intervention and Embeddedness: Art Practice and Environmental Discourse,” Association of American Geographers annual meeting, February 2012
"Exhibition Review" discussed current art from the stage, National Academy (NYC), April, 2007
"Artists and Environmentalists A Dialogue" A.I.R. Gallery, NYC, March 1994
"Subject Into Object Rethinking Still Life" Rosa Esman Gallery, New York, January 1990
Critics' Discussion, opening exhibition "Awards for the Visual Arts," Albright-Knox Museum of Art, Buffalo, May 1985
“Criticism and Regional Publications.” National Consortium of Visual Arts Coordinators, Chicago
“Criticism Decentralized.” First National Conference, American Section of International Association of Art Critics,” New York City, February 1983
“Fiber into Print,” Fiberworks, Kala Institute and The Oakland Museum, January 1983
“The Ethics of Reviewing Local Arts.” Media Alliance, San Francisco, October 1982
“Criticism of Sculpture in a Public Context,” International Sculpture Conference, August 1982
“The Responsibility of Critics to Social Change,” Art Works for the People conference, San Francisco, May 1982
Discussion of “Forum on Bay Area Art Criticism,” KPFA radio, Berkeley, arts program with Jane Hall January 1982
Representative of art criticism on “Careers in the Arts for Women,” Stanford University, December 1981