Hikmet Sidney Loe: Robert Smithson’s Dinosaurs – There be Sea Monsters!

The moviola becomes a “time machine” that transforms trucks into dinosaurs. – Robert Smithson 

Artist Robert Smithson (1938-73) is known for his monumental earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970) situated along the shoreline of Great Salt Lake. He is also known for bringing the deep past to the present world of art, positing a world populated with prehistoric motifs: dinosaurs and sea monsters. Speaker Hikmet Sidney Loe will discuss Smithson’s childhood fascination with creatures from past geologic eras, which he carried into and employed in his adult artistic endeavors. Eschewing one specific geographic region and blending high and low images—cutouts and postcards with the contemporary art of the 1970s—he created unique worlds filled with the wonders of metaphor and imagination.  

Hikmet Sidney Loe is Assistant Visiting Professor in art history at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is an author, curator, and public speaker whose work examines the changeable nature of the earth and addresses our perceptual and cultural constructs of the land. Her first book, The Spiral Jetty Encyclo: Exploring Robert Smithson’s Earthwork through Time and Place (2017) won the 15 Bytes Book Award for Art Book (2018). Her next book, The Sun Tunnels Encyclo: Exploring Nancy Holt’s Earthwork through Perception and Site is scheduled to be published in 2026 by The University of Utah Press.