Language should find itself in the physical world, and not end up locked in an idea in somebody’s head. – Robert Smithson
Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits. – Robert Smithson
The scenic ideals that surround even our national parks are carriers of a nostalgia for heavenly bliss and eternal calmness. – Robert Smithson
The museum spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of generalizations that mobilize the eye. – Robert Smithson
When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us. – Robert Smithson
Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future. – Robert Smithson
From the top of the quarry cliffs, one could see the New Jersey suburbs bordered by the New York City skyline. – Robert Smithson
The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground- congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality. – Robert Smithson
Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal. – Robert Smithson
A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world. – Robert Smithson
Art history is less explosive than the rest of history, so it sinks faster into the pulverized regions of time. – Robert Smithson
I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation. – Robert Smithson
Objects in a park suggest static repose rather than any ongoing dialectic. Parks are finished landscapes for finished art . – Robert Smithson
History is representational, while time is abstract; both of these artifices may be found in museums, where they span everybody’s own vacancy. – Robert Smithson
