Robert Smithson

NYTimes Editorial:
Protecting a Monumental Sculpture
In the northeastern United States, with all the woods and hills, it is usually pretty hard to see five miles at a stretch. In a place like Utah’s Great Salt Lake — vast in its openness and flatness — five miles is a mere arm’s length away. That is why a Canadian company’s plan to begin oil-drilling from a pair of barges near Rozel Point, on the edge of the lake, has caused so much concern.
Rozel Point is the location of Robert Smithson’s iconic 1970 sculpture called “Spiral Jetty,” a massive earthwork that curves its way out into the lake. It is the most important and familiar of Smithson’s earthworks — a giant swirl of basalt and soil that redefines the landscape it inhabits. In that terrain, drilling within five miles — as the company hopes to do — is not much different from drilling through the heart of Smithson’s earth sculpture.
There is every good reason to call this plan to a halt on aesthetic grounds. But there are other reasons too. This stretch of the lake is also a critical breeding ground for many species of shorebirds.
In 2006, as part of an agreement with conservation groups to protect those breeding grounds, the state withdrew oil and gas leases on more than a hundred thousand acres in this stretch of the lake. Pearl Montana Exploration and Production — the Canadian company in question — holds three leases that date from 2003 and were exempted from the 2006 agreement.
Utah is allowed to cancel the lease if a public trust is threatened. The “Spiral Jetty” is a masterpiece of contemporary sculpture, a public trust that needs to be protected, and so is the habitat of the birds who breed within view of it.

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