Exhibition considers the legacy of the Locator in Nancy Holt's practice

CHICAGO, IL.— The Art Institute of Chicago is presenting Nancy Holt: Seeing in the Round, on view through April 20, 2025. The first exhibition of Nancy Holt’s work at the Art Institute, the project considers the legacy of the Locator in Holt’s practice. Constructed from two pieces of welded steel pipe, with an opening set at the height of her own line of sight, the Locator was Holt’s first sculpture. It soon became a powerful way for her to train a viewer’s eye on overlooked aspects of the urban landscape, while also grounding them in the conscious process of perception. Her first Locator works were installed in her New York Studio in 1971, and across the decade of the 1970s she developed the works into site-responsive installations.

In this exhibition, conceived in collaboration with the Holt/Smithson Foundation, two historical works—Dual Locators (1972) and Locator (P.S.1) (1980)—are presented for the first time outdoors on a sculpture terrace, where the interior and exterior architecture of the museum are in constant dialogue with each other and the surrounding city.

“Presenting Nancy Holt’s work on the Bluhm Family Terrace has afforded us an extraordinary opportunity to consider the legacy of the Locator in her practice while also bringing these works into a new context” said Caitlin Haskell, Gary C. and Frances Comer Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. “We are excited for visitors to experience how these installations call attention to the architecture of the terrace, and bring awareness to the act of looking.”

This installation invites visitors to interact with the Locators, centering the individual experience of vision, while challenging the presumption that how we see is in any way self-evident.

Nancy Holt: Seeing in the Round is curated by Caitlin Haskell, Gary C. and Frances Comer Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Makayla May, curatorial associate, Modern and Contemporary Art.