Spiral Jetty — Utah’s most famous artwork — from A to Z

When Hikmet Sidney Loe told her adviser that she wanted to write her master’s thesis in art history on Spiral Jetty, the advisor was dubious.

“He said, ‘You’re not going to write a dead work of art. Spiral Jetty is dead, it’s gone, you can’t write about it,’” Loe recalled in a recent interview.

This was 1993, and Robert Smithson’s earthwork, built in 1970 off Rozel Point into the northern part of the Great Salt Lake, had been submerged under several feet of water for 20 years.