The reappearing masterpiece: ranking American artists and art works of the late twentieth century

Late in the summer of 2002, visitors to Rozel Point in Gunnison Bay, the north arm of Utah’s Great Salt Lake, reported that Spiral Jetty was visible from the lake’s shore. The artist Robert Smithson had formed the 1500-foot-long jetty in 1970, using two dump trucks, a tractor, and a front loader to move more than 6,500 tons of mud, salt crystals, and rock.1 Although Smithson recognized that his creation would be submerged periodically when the lake’s level rose, he may have miscalculated how common this would be, for the jetty had been hidden almost continuously since 1972.