Spiral Jetty

1970

Spiral Jetty, 1970. Robert Smithson (American, 1938–1973). 16 mm film on video, color, sound; 35 min.; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Louis D. Kacalieff, M.D. Fund 2020.266 Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty serves as a companion piece to his iconic, monumental earthwork of the same name, which he constructed in the Great Salt Lake, Utah in 1970. The film documents the siting and making of the work, interspersing imagery of maps, aerial footage of the lake, and Smithson driving through the Utah landscape, all narrated by the artist’s voiceover of history, coordinates, and processes that informed the evolution of the work.