Reflection: UMFA Executive Director Gretchen Dietrich’s Spiral Jetty Story

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970. © Holt/Smithson Foundation and Dia Art Foundation/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: Nancy Holt

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970), the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) in Salt Lake City is gathering community stories concerning the iconic work of Land art. Here, UMFA executive director Gretchen Dietrich recalls her first experience with the artwork.

When my husband, infant son, and I moved to Salt Lake City in 2003, we knew very little about our new home. But as lifelong art lovers and art professionals, we knew a lot about Spiral Jetty, the monumental earthwork that artist Robert Smithson created off the northern shore of the Great Salt Lake. We went to see it right away. The day was hot, and the wide-open spaces of Utah were new to me. Back then the road was still rough, so we crept along in our old Honda as far as we dared, and then walked the last quarter mile or so. Spiral Jetty, underwater for many years since its creation in 1970, had only recently emerged. Our first glimpse astonished us: its black basalt rocks were completely encased in glimmering white salt, and the entire artwork literally glowed. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time—a perfect metaphor for our new life in Utah, which seemed so foreign and yet so beautiful and full of possibility.

—Gretchen Dietrich

Read more and submit your own Spiral Jetty memory here on UMFA’s blog.

Dia Art Foundation is proud to be the owner and steward of Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Dia partners with the Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster College, Holt/Smithson Foundation, and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah to further advocate for Spiral Jetty.  The Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands within the State of Utah’s Department of Natural Resources oversees the lakebed where Spiral Jetty is located. 

Gretchen Dietrich is executive director of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Prior to her tenure at the UMFA, she held positions in museum education, public programming, and exhibition planning at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She currently serves on the board of the Art Bridges Foundation, which shares outstanding works of American Art with those that otherwise have limited access. From 2015–18, Dietrich served on the board of the Association of Art Museum Directors, overseeing its education and community issues committee. Dietrich holds an MA in art history from Temple University, Philadelphia and a BA in the same field from Chestnut Hill College, also in Philadelphia.