page_title: Robert Smithson
section_title: Death and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Smithson / Death and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of the remains of Robert Smithson's Amarillo Ramp in 1989
context_page_description: Robert Smithson was an American artist known for sculpture and land art who often used drawing and photography in relation to the spatial arts. His work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and museums and is held in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Tate Modern, London, the
  Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. He was one of the founders of the Land Art movement whose best known work is the Spiral Jetty.
context_section_description: On July 20, 1973, Smithson died in a plane crash while surveying sites for his work Amarillo Ramp in the vicinity of Amarillo, Texas. Smithson has a following among many contemporary artists. Artists Tacita Dean, Sam Durant, Renée Green, Lee Ranaldo, Vik Muniz, Mike Nelson, and the Bruce High Quality Foundation have all made homages to Smithson's works.
  In 2017 the Holt/Smithson Foundation was founded to preserve, through public service, the investigative spirit the two artists who "developed innovative methods of exploring our relationship with the planet, and expanded the limits of artistic practice." The goal of the foundation is to "increase awareness of both artists' creative legacies".
caption: Robert Smithson's Amarillo Ramp in 1989.
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