Spiral Jetty (1970), Robert Smithson’s seminal earthwork, is a 460 meter long and 4.6 meter wide coil of basalt rock and earth that extends into Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Conservation of this earthwork is particularly challenging, as the artist suggests it was intended to both withstand and be “intimately involved with the climate changes and natural disturbances” of the site. In order to understand the nature and patterns of change at the site and to effectively steward the work over time, appropriate methods of documentation are necessary. This paper describes a low-cost method of aerial balloon photography that has been successfully used to document and monitor Spiral Jetty’s condition.

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