From Deseret News archives:
Smithson's 'Spiral' resurfaces
The 1,500-foot jetty became Smithson's signature work. Photos of it began to appear in art books. People wanted to see it, this long rock pier that stretches from the shore and circles in the water. Tourists, some from as far away as Europe, sought it out driving their rental cars down a long, bumpy dirt road from the Golden Spike National Historic Site to Rozel Point, on the edge of the Great Salt Lake.
As the lake rose during the floods of the 1980s, Spiral Jetty was submerged under 20 feet of water. Sometimes you could see it from the air. At various times during the 1990s, it could be seen from the shore as well. With this past decade's drought, people who had never walked out to see it have had their chance.
This year, the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York City, will present a retrospective of Smithson's work. The exhibition was organized by Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art and has already been seen in Dallas. It opens at the Whitney on June 23 and runs through October 23, and includes Smithson's sculptures, photos, paintings, drawings and films. Of course, the exhibit will also include photos of Spiral Jetty.
Smithson's widow Nancy Holt was on hand as well. Holt also creates earthworks. (Utahns might be familiar with her Sun Tunnels, which, like Spiral Jetty, can be found in Box Elder County.)
Jan Rothschild from the Whitney was there, too, bringing along several curators. She came because she hadn't seen the jetty before. A local devotee of the jetty, Hikmet Loe, came along as well.
Margaret Godfrey, interagency program manager for the state's tourism office, traveled with the group and reports that they loved seeing the jetty. And not only the jetty, she said. They were happy about sagebrush and lizards and pelicans, too. "They were blown away by the nature and by the art." In the early evening, the journalists and the museum folks flew over the site in a helicopter and photographed the jetty from the air.
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