Conrad Bakker recreates all 1,100+ books from pioneering land artist Robert Smithson’s personal library — Colossal
An autodidact and polymath, Robert Smithson cemented his place as one of the preeminent land artists during his short life. Together with his fellow artist and wife Nancy Holt, Smithson pioneered a new way of working, exploring connections to landscape and place and continually exploring the formation of knowledge.
He died in a plane crash in 1973 at the age of 35, leaving behind a vast personal library that represented his wide-ranging interests: books on crystals and rocks and minerals, dinosaurs and insects, myths and nursery rhymes, and the classics of James Joyce. Finnegans Wake and Jorge Luis Borges novel. After his death, Holt donated the entire Smithsonian collection (approximately 1,120 books) to the Archives of American Art, where it remains today.
There is, however, another way to understand the narratives and materials that shaped Smithson’s thought and practice. In 2019, Conrad Bakker completed a five-year project to recreate all pieces from the original series in 1:1 scale. “Untitled Projects: The Robert Smithson Library and Book Club,” on display in museums and galleries from Utah to Arkansas to New York, is both a thoughtful ode to this pioneering artist and a bold reflection on how we access and consume information.
“I don’t quite remember the first time I met Robert Smithson, but I’ve always loved his artwork, especially the way he allowed sculptures to coexist within the physical space of the gallery and outside in the landscape,” Barker said. His first exposure to artists’ libraries was through Ann Reynolds Robert Smithson: Learning from New Jersey and Beyondwhich provides a comprehensive catalog of every title and edition in the collection.
“I was fascinated by this wonderful list of books and curious about the diversity of his subjects and the intensity with which he educated himself through his books,” Barker said. He added that the library is also a “time capsule of artistic research in the 1960s. I imagine the collection as an extension of Robert Smithson’s ideas, curiosity, and thinking.”
This prompted part of an ongoing study by Buck Untitled projecta practice that recreates everyday objects such as chocolate bars or VHS tapes to explore aspects of economic systems, production and consumption. Using images provided by online booksellers, he carved and painted wooden replicas of each edition.
Displayed in cardboard-like boxes stacked on the floor, Barker’s collection takes many forms, from room-sized installations to a full-size bookstore in a storefront in a Famous Hardware building in Springdale, Arkansas. While the library in his studio remains intact, the Book Club also allows the collector to temporarily purchase a second sculpture. He created approximately 350 additional works for this element of the project.
The library is just one part of Buck’s interest in books as objects, which includes auctions of old paperbacks and an archive of self-help books from the 1970s. For the artist, these objects provide many clues, from “books as historical records of culture and personal memory, to books as
commodities, bookstores as public space, books as (obsolete) technology, books as portable containers of information, guidance and ideas,” he writes.
Bakker is currently working on several projects, including building a full-size copy shop (think Kinko’s from the 1980s) for a weather station in Lafayette, Indiana. In early 2026, he will also exhibit a work linking capitalism and climate change at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder. The library may be heading to Stockholm in the coming months, but keep an eye on the project’s Instagram for more information.
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