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.

The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground- congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality.

Banal words function as a feeble phenomena that fall into their own mental bogs of meaning.

Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits.

Mistakes and dead-ends often mean more to these artists than any proven problem.

Language should find itself in the physical world, and not end up locked in an idea in somebody's head.

Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.

Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories.

The scenic ideals that surround even our national parks are carriers of a nostalgia for heavenly bliss and eternal calmness.

Nature does not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development.

Nature is never finished.

Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal.