Utah’s enchanting ‘Spiral Jetty’ has been added to the National Register of Historic Places

An unusually long, winding stretch of land juts out from the shoreline of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Titled Spiral scaffoldingthe large-scale swirl was built by an artist in 1970 Robert Smithsonwho was known for manipulating the Earth into abstract shapes. Now the land artwork has been added to that of the National Park Service National Register of Historic Places.

“We are happy with that Spiral scaffolding has received this important recognition, which will help us raise awareness of the iconic artwork and advocate for its long-term preservation,” said Jessica Morgan, director of Dia Art Foundation, owner of Spiral scaffoldingin one statement. “In the 54 years since Spiral scaffolding has existed, it is both engulfed by the Great Salt Lake and located far from the lake shore, a testament to the changing landscape around it.”

Slide acquired Spiral scaffolding in 1999, when Smithson’s widow, Nancy Holt, donated the artwork. Over the years, the foundation has collaborated with the Great Salt Lake Institutethe Holt/Smithson Foundation and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts to take care of it.

Spiral scaffolding is one of the world’s most famous works by country art: art that arises directly in and from a landscape, by sculpting earth or by building with natural materials. The medium became popular in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States conceptual art movement, which prioritized the ideas, plans and intentions of artists over the artworks themselves.

Born in New Jersey in 1938, Smithson grew up in the global art scene in the 1950s, creating paintings, drawings and sculptures that often referenced science fiction, poetry and pop culture. He was also inspired by physical spaces, especially those in his home state. In the 1970s, Smithson began creating earthworks, the works of art that would define his career. According to the Holt/Smithson Foundationhe was committed to sculpture that ‘collaborated with entropy’ – embracing the chaos of natural space.

“I was always interested in… origins and primal beginnings – you know, the archetypal nature of things,” Smithson once said, according to the foundation. “As an artist, it’s quite interesting to take on the persona of a geological agent, where the human actually becomes part of that process rather than conquering it.”

In 1970, Smithson traveled to the Great Salt Lake’s Rozel Point Peninsula, northwest of Salt Lake City, and arranged 6,000 tons of local black basalt rock into a 1,500-foot-long protruding line that extends into the lake and curls counterclockwise in a spiral.

“I think it was just unimaginable for so many artists working in their studios and creating works that you hang on the wall, or smaller sculptures,” Kelly Kivland, a former Dia curator, told the Desert News‘Hof Mann in 2020.

Smithson created other important pieces of land art in the years that followed. He built in 1971 Broken circle/spiral hill: a round jetty and canal on the edge of a sand quarry in the Netherlands. He started in 1973 Amarillo Drivewaya sloping semicircle of raised earth in Texas, but he died in a plane crash before finishing it. Smithson’s widow and two other artists completed it for him.

Spiral scaffolding remains Smithson’s best-known work. Over the years, it has drawn attention to the Great Salt Lake’s natural features, such as its otherworldly pink colour and the ever-changing water level. In 2017, Spiral scaffolding was declared the official work of art of Utah.

As Dia curator Jordan Carter tells Artnet‘s Vittoria Benzine, the artwork’s new designation as a Nationally Registered Historic Site, will not come with physical signage or plaques. “We hope that the improved recognition will discourage other interventions in the landscape that have a negative impact on the environment and ecology of the lake,” he says.

“Beloved in Utah and beyond, this work of art has come to mean a lot to many people,” Morgan said in the statement. “We are proud to continue our work caring and advocating Spiral scaffolding to preserve it for generations to come.”