Summer Solstice

Annual Ring By Nancy Holt

Annual Ring was commissioned in 1981 under General Services Administration’s Art in Architecture Program for the Federal Building in Saginaw.  When the building was demolished in 1999, the sculpture was disassembled and moved to its current storage location at Saginaw Valley State University.

Nancy Holt selected the current site for Annual Ring because it is a natural, quiet, meditative place open to the sky. Since the site is on a peninsula surrounded by a pond, its image reflects on the pond surface.

Annually at solar noon on the summer solstice at 1:37 pm, when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, the sun shines through the ring at the top of the domed sculpture, casting a circle of light onto a ring in the ground.  The circle of sunlight and the ring on the ground are off center because the sun is not directly overhead at solar noon since Annual Ring, is at a latitude well north of the Equator.  A small opening (six foot in diameter) frames the North Star.  The North Star is centered in the small ring as viewed from the center of the ring on the ground that marks solar noon on the summer solstice.