Robert Smithson in Europe

                                                                                                                  deutsch/German
September 27, 2025 to February 22, 2026

In the fall of 2025, the Josef Albers Museum will present one of the most important US-American artists of the 1960s and 1970s in the local context of the Ruhr area in its award-winning new building. The Bottrop exhibition for the first time brings together Robert Smithson’s artistic production in the Netherlands, Italy, Great Britain and Germany, with a special focus on North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), the Rhineland and the Ruhr region local to the city of Bottrop. Robert Smithson in Europe includes significant works from international museums and from the collection of the Holt/Smithson Foundation, including the 1969 works Mirror Displacement: Indoors, Essen Soil and Mirrors, Chalk-Mirror Displacement, and works relating to the 1971 earthwork Broken Circle/Spiral Hill.

Robert Smithson (1938–1973) was instrumental in coining the idea of Earth Art in the 1970s. His sculptures and installations from the late 1960s onwards address conditions of place, entropy and relationships between humans and nature, industry and the environment. He realized some of his most important works in Europe and was fascinated by the NRW region’s geological and industrial heritage. In 1968/69, he visited the premises of the Gutehoffnungshütte ("Good Hope Ironworks") in Oberhausen, together with the photographer Bernd Becher (1931–2007) and the gallerist Konrad Fischer (1939–1996), to collect slag—the stony waste material separated from metals during smelting, deposited as byproducts from the region's historical iron and steel industries. Bottrop is located not far from the historical site: situated between coal and sand pits, it is uniquely shaped by mining and the steel industry. In addition to the artworks, materials from the artist's archive will be on display that contextualize the works and allow deep insights into the life and work of Robert Smithson: photographs, writings, drawings, books and films document the development of conceptual and aesthetic ideas over several months.

In close cooperation with the Holt/Smithson Foundation, the exhibition is curated by Markus Karstieß, artist and professor at the Koblenz University of Applied Sciences, Dr Eva Schmidt, art historian and former director of the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen and Monja Droßmann, curator of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop.

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive catalog in German and English. 

The exhibition is funded by

In cooperation with