The Land Art installation Spiral Jetty (Spiral Pier), created in 1970 by the American artist Robert Smithson (1938-1973) and located on the banks of the Great Salt Lake in Utah (United States), has just entered the National Register of Historic Places. It is the first work of Land Art registered among 95,000 other sites. “We are delighted that Spiral Jetty has received this important recognition, which will help us raise awareness of this iconic work of art and advocate for its long-term conservation”indicates Jessica Morgan, director of the Dia Foundation, owner of the work.
Spiral Jetty is made up of a mass of minerals, mud and basalt rocks which coils on itself in a spiral 457 meters long above the water. It is the emblematic work of Land Art, an artistic movement of the 1960s favoring creations from natural materials and exhibited in the open air rather than in museums.
Barely two years after its creation, it was submerged by rains and disappeared underwater, except for a period between 1993 and 1997. In 1999, during a period of drought, the spiral resurfaced and is transformed: the original black rocks are encrusted with white salt crystals. A transformation that the artist Robert Smithson had planned. The work was never designed as a monument, but rather as a living organism subject to climatic changes.
The current challenge is to guarantee the longevity of the work without any intervention that could alter it; what this inscription can bring him. In 2008, Spiral Jetty had been threatened by an oil drilling project sparking strong protests. This project, which ultimately did not see the light of day, would have caused irreparable damage to the lake’s environment and threatened the installation.
The registration of property in the national register protects them against various projects likely to affect them thanks to different laws: the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Department of Transportation Act (DOTA). If national protection was not ensured earlier it is because in principle the properties likely to be registered in the National Register must be at least 50 years old.
When Robert Smithson died in 1973, Spiral Jetty returned to his wife, also an artist, Nancy Holt, who donated it to the Dia Foundation in 1999. Since then, its conservation has been jointly ensured by the Dia Foundation, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, the Great Salt Lake Institute, the University of Westminster and the Holt/Smithson Foundation.
