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Cover Story, November 2024: Max Andrews on Robert Smithson’s text “Aerial Art” (1969)

 Fri, Nov 1 2024
November 2024 cover story on www.lttds.org


NEW MONTH
NEW MONTHLY COVER STORY

The November 2024 monthly Cover Story “Frequent Flyers: Robert Smithson’s ‘Aerial Art,’ 1969” is now up on Latitudes’ homepage (after November 2024 it will be archived here). Cover Stories are published monthly featuring past, present, or forthcoming projects, research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects, or field trips related to Latitudes’ curatorial projects and activities.

Max Andrews was commissioned to contribute an essay on a work by Robert Smithson (1938–1973) for the Holt/Smithson Foundation’s Scholarly Text Program. 

→Read here

Max chose to write on Smithson’s text “Aerial Art” published in Studio International in February 1969. In the essay, Smithson presented proposals developed for Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport in 1966–67, in collaboration with Tippetts—Abbett—McCarthy—Stratton Architects and Engineers. His proposals envisioned extensive earthworks to be installed between the runways, created by himself, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, and Sol LeWitt.


Bound reproductions of slides accompanying early terminal planning concepts for the Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport, presented by airlines to top management in December 1966 and January 1967. The first phase of the runway layout and master plan slide reproductions have been annotated with notes and drawings regarding earthworks by Robert Smithson. Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt papers, 1905-1987. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

The Scholarly Text Program regularly commissions thinkers from various disciplines to write 1,200 words on single artworks by Nancy Holt and/or Robert Smithson. These essays explore how Holt and Smithson’s ideas resonate through contemporary artistic and cultural production, covering topics ranging from geology to ecology, poetry, and beyond.

Read Mariana Cánepa Luna’s recently published essay on Nancy Holt’s site-responsive installation “Ventilation System” (1985–1992) also part of the Scholarly Text Programme’s Chapter 7.

Thank you to Lisa Le Feuvre, Executive Director of the Holt/Smithson Foundation, for the kind invitation to contribute to the foundation’s growing archive, and to William T. Carson, Program Manager and Assistant Curator, for the research assistance. 

https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/scholarly-texts

Abstract: 

Max Andrews’ essay delves into Robert Smithson's seminal article "Aerial Art" (1969), which outlines his earthworks proposals for the Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport and those of Carl Andre, Robert Morris, and Sol LeWitt. Andrews examines the historical context, including the growth of air travel and global art networks. Importantly, the essay underscores the sustained multi-decade increase in CO2 emissions from air travel and its significant contribution to the climate crisis.

Keywords: 

Robert Smithson, Aerial Art, 1969, Studio International, Artforum, Anthropocene, Charles Jencks, postmodernism, Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport, Tippetts–Abbett–McCarthy–Stratton, earthworks, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, and Sol LeWitt, site-specificity, Boing 747, Spiral Jetty, CO2 emissions, frequent flying, transnational art world, contemporary art, decarbonization, exhibition-making, curatorial hypermobility, Harald Szeemann, air travel, global mobility, low-carbon footprint art production, multinational museum brands, biennial model, Fernand Braudel, Gustav Metzger, Reduce Art Flights, Paris Agreement, 2030, global warming. 

How to cite:

Andrews, Max, “Frequent Flyers: Robert Smithson’s “Aerial Art,” 1969”, Holt/Smithson Foundation: Scholarly Texts Chapter 7 (October 2024). ISBN: 978-1-952603-36-5


→ RELATED CONTENT: 

  • Other writing 
  • Looking back – Visiting Robert Smithson's “Spiral Jetty” (1970) on 7 September 2004, 7 Sep 2014
  • Publication “Robert Smithson: Art in Continual Movement” (Alauda Publications, 2012) includes an essay by Max Andrews, 28 Mar 2012
  • Lecture by Max Andrews "From Spiral to Spime: Robert Smithson, the ecological and the curatorial", 13 March, 2pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Royal College of Art, London, 12 March 2012
  • Robert Smithson's “Broken Circle/Spiral Hill Revisited” (1971–2011) and The Land Art Contemporary programme, 14 September 2011
  • Archive of Monthly Cover Stories
  • Cover Story, October 2024: Nancy Holt “Ventilation System”, 1 Oct 2024
  • Cover Story, September 2024: THE CREST OF A WAVE, 2 Sept 2024
  • Cover Story, July-August 2024: Rosa Tharrats, Curtain Call, 1 July 2024
  • Cover Story, June 2024: TERENCE GOWER—DIPLOMACY, URBANISM, URANIUM, 3 June 2024
  • Cover Story, May 2024: Richard Serra & Anne Garde—Threats of Paradise, 30 Apr 2024 
  • Cover Story, May 2024: Richard Serra & Anne Garde—Threats of Paradise, 30 April 2024
  • Cover Story, April 2024: In Progress–Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum, 2 April 2024
  • Cover Story, March 2024: Dibbets en Palencia, 4 March 2024
  • Cover Story, February 2024: Climate Conscious Travel to ARCOmadrid, 1 February 2024
  • Cover Story, January 2024: Curating Lab 2014–Curatorial Intensive, 2 Jan 2024 
  • Cover Story, December 2023: Ibon Aranberri, Partial View, 2 Dec 2023 
  • Cover Story, November 2023: Surucuá, Teque-teque, Arara: Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, 2 Nov 2023

 2024, air travel, CO2 footprint, earthworks, emissions, environmentalism, Essay, Max Andrews, Robert Smithson
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