Nancy Holt's Overlooked Works Shine at MAK Center's Schindler House

The MAK Center presents 'Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics,' curated by Lisa le Feuvre and Beth Stryker at R.M. Schindler's Kings Road house in Los Angeles. The exhibition challenges the dominance of Holt's iconic desert installation Sun Tunnels (1973–76), a Dia Art Foundation acquisition since 2018, by foregrounding her subtler photo, audio, and smaller-scale works. Key pieces include California Sun Signs (1972), a series of deadpan photographs of 'Sun' signage, and the audio work U.S. 80 SOLO: NEBRASKA (1976–1979), a 13-minute loop of observations from a solo drive from Utah to New Jersey. The review critiques the mysticism surrounding both Holt and Schindler's architecture, noting the house's pink tile kitchen installed by Pauline Schindler in the 1970s, later replaced with raw wood and magnesite. Holt's practice, influenced by Vipassanā meditation, avoids transcendence, instead casting the artificial and personal in crisp relief.