Completed in 1970 on the shores of Utah’s Great Salt Lake, Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson is a masterpiece of land art that feels both eternal and ever-changing. For Smithson, nature itself—with its relentless cycles of creation and destruction—became his medium. Entropy was his muse: the perpetual drift of matter and energy, the unavoidable decay and transformation of all things. Now, more than half a century later, this monumental work has been added to the National Register of Historic Places, a long-overdue acknowledgment that will ensure Spiral Jetty receives the care and recognition it deserves for generations to come.
“In the past couple of decades, we have seen increasing awareness of Spiral Jetty, so I was excited when Dia discussed with us at the Utah State Historic Preservation Office the possibility of nominating it to the National Register of Historic Places,” said Cory Jensen of the Utah State Historic Preservation Office.
The Dia Foundation officially acquired Spiral Jetty in 1999, thanks to a donation from artist Nancy Holt—Smithson’s wife—along with the Estate of Robert Smithson. Since then, Dia has partnered with the Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster University, the Holt/Smithson Foundation and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah to steward the work. Over its 54 years of existence, Spiral Jetty has both disappeared beneath the lake’s rising waters and stood starkly distant from the shoreline, its changing visibility a tangible record of the shifting landscape.
Constructed using more than 6,000 tons of black basalt rock and earth, Spiral Jetty unfurls as a counterclockwise coil, 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide, expanding gracefully as it moves outward into the lake. “As I looked at the site, it reverberated out to the horizons only to suggest an immobile cyclone while flickering light made the entire landscape appear to quake,” Smithson wrote at the time, capturing the sublime magnetism of the place. The sense of scale was critical for him: it creates that delicate mix of awe and vulnerability—a viewer dwarfed by the vastness of the lake, yet somehow tethered to its ancient, cyclical rhythms.
But Spiral Jetty was never meant to be monumental. Instead, Smithson imagined it as a living, dynamic work—one that embraces natural processes, morphs with the shifting water levels and bears silent witness to the encroaching impacts of climate change. It refuses to be static, forever moving with the forces of entropy that inspired it, making Spiral Jetty as alive today as it was in 1970.
SEE ALSO: What We Know About the ‘Cézanne 2025’ Celebrations in Aix-en-Provence
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 99 percent of Utah is currently experiencing extreme drought conditions, a relentless trend over recent years that has pushed the Great Salt Lake’s water levels to their lowest ever recorded. Experts warn that further declines could spike water salinity, while dust from the exposed lakebed could compromise air quality across the region. Integrated directly into this fragile landscape, Spiral Jetty has transformed over the years into a profound symbolic presence—an alarm bell for drastic environmental changes, inviting contemplation on geological processes, the passage of time, and the precarious intersection of human artifice with the forces of nature.
The artwork exists in a fluid dimension where, as Smithson described it, “solid and liquid lost themselves in each other.” In its final, immutable truth, Spiral Jetty stands as a timeless testament to the dialogue between human creativity and nature’s inexorable forces.
“The protective review afforded by the National Register designation further advances our efforts to preserve Spiral Jetty as Smithson intended and elevates the work of our local partners in conserving the natural environment of the Great Salt Lake, which is integral to the work itself. Spiral Jetty—quite literally the most pathbreaking example of land art in the world—is already recognized as the state of Utah’s official work of art, signaling its renown on a local level, which is now appropriately magnified by this national honor,” said Jordan Carter, Dia’s curator and co-department head, in a statement.
The National Register of Historic Places, established under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, is the official U.S. list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical, cultural, architectural or archaeological significance. While the list traditionally highlights architectural and historical landmarks, it does include works of art, though Spiral Jetty breaks ground here as the first land art piece to be added. It joins other works of art, including Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan. Last August, the registry also added the home studio of the late American assemblage artist L.V. Hull in Mississippi.
