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Maybe we have the whole Smithsonian entropy thing wrong.
In 2002, Artforum’s Nico Israel whined with condescension about the homogenous strip mall & fast food landscape he had to endure on his road trip from one perfectly isolated Earthwork [Spiral Jetty] to another [Double Negative].
Then, as the Jetty has re-emerged year after year, visitor traffic has increased dramatically, along with press coverage and local awareness and appreciation.
Road signs to the Jetty appear in the middle of what was once unmarked desert scrub.
Tour buses idle where once only high-clearance 4WD’s were advised to go. The Dia Center takes ownership [?] of the Jetty.
And Smithson’s widow, fresh on the heels of fabricating a piece that didn’t exist during the artist’s lifetime, mentions offhandedly that she doesn’t see how adding rocks and regrading ramps would conflict with her husband’s idea of entropy.
And now, the industrial detritus that has long defined the Jetty’s site for visitors–and, to some extent at least, for the artist himself, who chose Rozel Point as much for the abandoned oil derricks as for the water’s reddish-pink tint–has been cleaned up and hauled away, deemed “an eyesore” by the State [as if anyone had bothered to look there until a couple of years ago].
Should we care? Conventional art world wisdom holds that Smithson’s entropy dictated a hands-off approach to his work. Que sera sera, dust to dust. Nature will take its inexorable course; stopping, fighting, or reversing this [d]evolution through restoration, maintenance, or re-creation is doing a disservice to Smithson’s ideas and his legacy.

“The Spiral Doily,” picked up in Utah on
my last trip to the Jetty

But in his seminal Artforum essay of 1966, “Entropy and the New Monuments,” the examples of entropy Smithson cited weren’t ivy-covered ruins and rubble, but New Jersey, Philip Johnson and the “cold glass boxes” of Park Avenue, and suburban sprawl. “The slurbs, urban sprawl, and the infinite number, of housing developments of the postwar boom have contributed to the architecture of entropy.”
Just this week, Reuters reported on a land use study that shows Suburban Sprawl may be an irrestistable force in the US. When he sited Spiral Jetty in BF Utah, was Smithson building against New Jerseyification, or just ahead of it? Is it possible–or is it just convenient acquiescence to suggest–that roped-off “Nature”-driven degradation is not, in fact, entropy, but Romanticism? Maybe letting “civilization” have its paving, scrubbing, sprucing up, licensing, Acoustiguiding, Ritz Carlton Jettyway Weekend Packaging way with the Jetty isn’t closer to the end game Smithson envisioned?
Entropy and the New Monuments [robertsmithson.com]
Suburban sprawl an irresistible force in US [reuters]

From The Salt Lake Tribune, 1/21/06:

Spiral Jetty cleanup: Utah officials last month removed several tons of junk from Rozel Point, the area along the Great Salt Lake’s north shore that is home to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty.
“Anyone who has made the trip to see the famous Spiral Jetty . . . has passed through the area and certainly noted that it was an eyesore,” says Joel Frandsen, director of the state Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, which supervised the cleanup along with the state Division of Oil, Gas and Mining.
Workers removed 18 loads of junk and plugged more than a dozen abandoned oil wells.

I spoke to someone at Forestry for some more detail. Included in that list of eyesores are the burned out trailer, that weird amphibious tank thing, the abandoned cars, basically most of the industrial detritus that fed into visitors’ sense of Smithsonian entropy. [Todd discusses this and has pictures of the now-gone junk on From The Floor.]
And about those oil wells, it turns out the oil is quite viscous, kind of tar-like, and it pools very slowly over the years. Some might say that for Smithson, that’s not a bug; it’s a feature. Well it’s moot now.
The project took a couple of weeks and supposedly focused only on sovereign land: state-owned shoreline, which is determined by elevation [i.e., the land, below 4,201′ I think, which is about four feet higher than the Jetty itself. Depending on the terrain, a 4′ change in elevation can take you quite a ways inland, although I can’t see it going all the way up to the trailer…hmm.]
There was also talk of negotiating an easement for parking, so that visitors won’t have to park on the road or trespass when they park beyond the “end of road” sign.
I didn’t get the sense that the Dia Center was involved in the project in any way, but we’ll see. I have some queries into them at the moment. The deadline for bids for a concession to operate a capuccino-and-smoothie cart during the peak Jetty months of June-October will begin March 15. OK, I made that last one up. I hope.
SLTrib Visual Arts [sltrib.com, thanks to Monty for the heads up]
Previous greg.org-on-Jetty action