6 Books on Robert Smithson’s Shelf

By the time Robert Smithson died in a plane crash in 1973, at the age of 35, he had amassed over 1,000 periodicals and books. Soon after his death, a graduate student catalogued each and every one—save for a few loaned to friends and never returned—and grouped the artist’s titles by genre before arranging them alphabetically.Smithson, who was also a skilled and articulate writer, is perhaps best known for artworks that dabble in anthropology, archaeology, and Earth sciences. Bu