Spiral Jetty, the Great Salt Lake and Dia

MAN's series on preserving Spiral Jetty
Part One: The future of Spiral Jetty.
Part Two: What's happening to the Great Salt Lake?
Part Three: Spiral Jetty, the Great Salt Lake and Dia
Part Four: Dia's 'buffer' approach to preserving Spiral Jetty
Part Five: The next step at GSL: Coalition-building, funding
Postscript: Spiral Jetty: Is federal protection a useful option?

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty is in the collection of the Dia Art Foundation. In Lynne Cooke's 2005 book on the Jetty, Dia describes itself as the Jetty's "custodian." So where is Dia on the three clearest ecological threats to the Great Salt Lake?

On Monday I asked Philippe Vergne, who was seven days into his tenure as Dia's director, and deputy director Laura Raicovich about these and other issues. (Raicovich was Dia's acting director after Jeffrey Weiss left Dia in March. In an email, Weiss declined to discuss the Jetty.) [Photo]

Vergne said he was unconcerned with the Great Salt Lake's level, which is at a 40-year low. The lake level has concerned Utah officials, industry and sportsmen because the lake's level seems out-of-whack with recent precipitation levels. Vergne, who doesn't have a brine shrimpery to think of, instead considered the lake level within the context of the Jetty's history. "It's something that's been part of the life of the Jetty and Robert Smithson was aware of that," Vergne said. "[Sunday] in Beacon we screened the film about the Spiral Jetty and a few years ago the Jetty was under six feet of water. Some of that is natural."

I asked Dia officials if the staggeringly high mercury levels recently discovered in GSL imperiled the Jetty itself, the red algae that Smithson considered essential to the piece, or even visitors to the Jetty.

"Obviously that's not our area of expertise," Raicovich said. "We've been trying to keep abreast of those developments. It's not just the oil drilling itself or the visual impact from a derrick, or a rig, or the impact of a spill, but this mercury issue is potentially enormous."

And what about Great Salt Lake Minerals Company's proposed evaporation ponds? [Photo, with evaporation ponds at bottom.]

"I don't really know enough about that to comment," Raicovich said. "I just know what's in the paper." Raicovich said that Dia has not studied the question of whether the ponds would impact the Jetty or its viewshed, and that it has not contacted EPA about its draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) on the ponds. The DEIS is due to be released next month with three public hearings to follow in November.

The challenge for Dia is that it is an art museum-with-a-(big)-twist. It has lots of experience working with artists and with art objects -- but with little experience in tackling varied, layered, and expansive ecological issues or in working with numerous allies as part of a coalition. As a result, Dia's approach to the Jetty -- and to works such as Walter De Maria's Lightning Field -- has been to address single issues as they come up. Think of it as keeping the temperature at a safe level by putting out fires instead of addressing climate change.

This approach has worked well in other places. The only clear threat to Lightning Field was ranching-related development on the edges of the field. Dia worked with the state of New Mexico on the issue and in June Dia finished raising $1.1 million and purchased a conservation easement for 6,000 acres on the south side of Lightning Field. When artist Michael Heizer became uncomfortable with the possibility of nuclear waste-laden rail cars passing close to City, Dia hired a Washington lobbyist, took some meetings with the secretary of the Department of Energy, and was effective.

But Dia's record isn't as good on the Jetty, which is why both art lovers and Dia's putative allies are concerned. When Nancy Holt sent out a letter about the drilling threat on Jan. 29 and the blogosphere picked up on it the next day, Dia was caught unaware of the issue. [UPDATE: Dia says that it became aware of the issue on Jan. 28 and began working on it then.] Dia didn't issue any kind of public statement until Feb. 6. If Utah hadn't extended the drilling public comment period because of blogosphere-driven reaction, Dia would have missed the issue completely.

Officials at several groups with an interest in GSL issues have told MAN that Dia has dropped out of sight in recent months, even failing to return phone calls and emails. No one questions whether Dia understands or values the Jetty -- the organization has produced a significant scholarly publication on the Jetty as recently as 2005, it has ensured that officeholders such as Utah's governor visit the Jetty to experience it for themselves, and it has made sure it was accessible to visitors -- but Dia's most obvious allies have significant questions about whether Dia is interested in working with allies on the broader environmental issues that have the potential to impact Spiral Jetty.

"The interesting conundrum here for Dia as I see it there is the integration of the ecosystem at stake," said Lynn de Freitas, the executive director of Friends of Great Salt Lake. "In the Jetty's part of the lake there are a lot of appealing aspects of development that could happen up there, in Gunnison Bay, that is. Whether or not Dia is..." de Freitas trailed off before starting again. 

"I don't know. I'm not used to working with the arts community. I really don't know what level of expectation can really come from an organization interested in the preservation of a single piece like Jetty, and how feasible it is for Dia to consider, 'What about these other things?' I would like to think they are every bit as interested in them as Friends and the broader conservation community are. But I can't be sure. I don't know what kind of soul-searching Dia's going to do, whether it will come back and say, 'Yeah we're with you for the long haul, regardless of what the issue is.'"

Which is not to say that Dia doesn't have its own ideas about preserving the Jetty. More on that here.