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We look slightly down at a hexagonal, abstract sculpture made with teal-blue, wooden bins radiating out in six arms from a smaller hexagonal bin in the center. Each of the six arms tapers from wider and taller bins at the perimeter to narrower, shorter bins near the center. Light brown sand partially fills the bins. The bins sit on a white platform, the outlines of which follow the six sides of the snowflake-like arrangement of bins. The platform sits on battleship-gray carpet.

Robert Smithson

A Nonsite, Pine Barrens, New Jersey, 1967 (Photostat of map); 1968 (Nonsite)

Not on View

Medium

painted aluminum, sand, painted wood, and Photostat of map with typed text

Dimensions

overall (Nonsite): 30.48 × 166.37 × 166.37 cm (12 × 65 1/2 × 65 1/2 in.)
overall (Photostat of map with typed text): 32 × 27 cm (12 5/8 × 10 5/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Virginia Dwan

Accession Number

2013.19.2.1

Artists / Makers

Robert Smithson (artist) American, 1938 - 1973

Image Use

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Inscription

lower right on map: R. Smithson 67; lower center, typed on label: _A_ _NONSITE_ (_an_ _indoor_ _earthwork_) / 31 sub-divisions based on a hexagonal / "airfield" in the Woodmansie Quadrangle - / New Jersey (Topographic) map. Each sub - / division of the _Nonsite_ contains sand / from the _site_ shown on the map. Tours / between the _Nonsite_ and the _site_ are possible. / The red dot on the map is the place where / the sand was collected.

Provenance

Virginia Dwan, New York; gift 2013 to NGA.

Associated Names

Dwan, Virginia

Exhibition History

1980: Robert Smithson: Sculpture, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art; Laguna Gloria Museum, Austin; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; American Pavilion, 40th Biennale, Venice; ARC, Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris; Sara Hilder Museum, Helsinki; Lehmbruck Museum, Duisberg; Museum of Modern Art, Belgrade; Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, 1980-1984, no. S18 (1980-1982 catalogue for U.S. venues), S16 (Paris and Otterlo catalogues), repro.

2012: Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2012-2013.

2014: Robert Smithson's New Jersey, Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, 2014, no. 6, repro.

Bibliography

2004: Graziani, Ron. Robert Smithson and the American Landscape. New York, 2004: 71, figs. 18(A), 18(B).

2013: Meyer, James. "Robert Smithson, A Non-Site (Pine Barrens, New Jersey) and Glass Stratum." National Gallery of Art Bulletin no. 49 (Fall 2013): 26-27, repro.