Tyler Green Modern Art Notes

The Dia Art Foundation is positioned to re-claim the lease for the 10 acres of state land on which Robert Smithson’s masterwork Spiral Jetty sits as early as this week, MAN has learned. Dia will meet with officials from the Utah Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands in Utah on Thursday, at which point DNR and Dia will hold what could be the final negotiation to determine terms for a new lease.

Spiral Jetty, located just off Rozel Point in the north of the Great Salt Lake, is one of the most influential artworks of the 20th century and is widely regarded as the world’s greatest earthwork.

“The likely scenario is that the lease will be re-negotiated and awarded to Dia,” DNR spokesperson Jason Curry confirmed on Tuesday afternoon. Curry said that no other negotiations or meetings are planned with the two other lease applicants. Curry said that the lease details, including but not limited to the term and cost, were still in draft form and that it would be premature to discuss them ahead of tomorrow’s meeting. He emphasized that a lease with Dia is not complete, but that Dia is the “likely” winner. [Image: Spiral Jetty via Flickr user Bryce W. Garner.]

Dia had held the site lease since 1999, when the Smithson estate donated the artwork to Dia. However, the status of Dia’s lease was thrown into doubt in June, when Dia and DNR became enmeshed in an administrative snafu as a result of which Dia may have failed to renew its lease after it expired earlier this year.

When the apparent availability of the lease became public in June, the DNR’s Forestry, Fire and State Lands division accepted three lease applications for the Spiral Jetty site: from Dia, from a new non-profit called The Jetty Foundation and from 89-year-old Seattle collector and philanthropist Herbert Steiner. Scott R. Jenkins, Steiner’s attorney, told me that it is his understanding that Steiner was not successful in bidding for the lease. Jetty Foundation founder Greg Allen declined to comment because the process is still ongoing, but he said that he had no plans to withdraw his application if and until the entire process is complete.

“It is happening and we’re happy to be moving forward,” Katie Sonnenborn, Dia’s director of external affairs told me on Tuesday.

A source close to the situation told MAN that a key lease term is expected to be that Dia agree to partner with a local art organization, effectively an adaptation the proposal put forth by The Jetty Foundation — minus The Jetty Foundation’s involvement. Sonnenborn said that Dia would have no comment on possible lease terms until after meeting with DNR on Thursday.

That requirement would ensure that the Spiral Jetty-site lease-holder is more involved in Great Salt Lake-related conservation and management issues, particularly when it comes to state and regional planning. The GSL is the focus of two ongoing state-level initiatives, the Great Salt Lake Advisory Council, which was created by the Utah legislature, and DNR’s decennial review of GSL management. By requiring that New York-based Dia find a local partner engaged in Utah and GSL-related issues, DNR would seem to be indicating that it wants to include consideration of the future of Spiral Jetty when the state considers the future of the lake and its ecosystem. (Earlier this month Dia told MAN that it has not been involved with any of Utah’s major GSL oversight or planning bodies since 2008.)

MAN has learned that Dia’s likely partner is the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, which is based at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. It is not clear how long a Dia-UMFA relationship would take to work out, a process which could result in a delay before any formal announcement of a lease signing. According to UMFA director Gretchen Dietrich, the museum and Dia have not yet formalized a relationship or talked with DNR about a partnership. Still, Dietrich said that the UMFA has a pre-existing relationship with Dia and that it is ready to work with DNR and with Dia to ensure the future of Spiral Jetty. She expects to be engaged in conversations with both Dia and DNR on Thursday. [Image: UMFA, via Machado and Silvetti Associates.]

“I don’t have more specific information about what the lease will or will not include,” Dietrich told me on Tuesday. “We’re committed to helping in any way we can, and if we are invited to work with DNR and with Dia, we’d be happy to do everything we can to ensure that the Jetty remains cared for and is protected going forward. However, it’s safe to say that conversations about that lie in the future. We are very happy to play a role. But what that exactly works out to be determined by these three parties.”

Dietrich said that she believed that the three parties would succeed in coming to an agreement about some form of shared stewardship or involvement with the Jetty site. She said that she wasn’t sure how her organization would fund its new, potential involvement with Spiral Jetty, but that there is a growing sense in Utah that Spiral Jetty is important to the state and she hopes that the funding community will respond to that.

“I really believe Dia is the right entity to take the lead on Spiral Jetty and I think we will in short order know what’s going on,” Dietrich said, referring to Thursday’s meeting between Dia and DNR officials. “I think it’s appropriate that if there’s a local organization to take the lead on [engaging with the Great Salt Lake Advisory Council or with the DNR planning process] that it be the MFA.” [Image: Robert Smithson, Spiral of Sulphur, 1970. Collection of UMFA.]

Dia and UMFA have worked together before, most notably around the just-closed UMFA exhibition “The Smithson Effect,” which explored Robert Smithson’s impact on contemporary art. Dietrich said that Dia helped UMFA build out the show’s web presence, especially the section on Spiral Jetty.

A new non-profit organization has filed an application with the Utah Department of Natural Resources in an effort to win the lease for the state land on which Robert Smithson’s iconic Spiral Jetty sits, MAN has learned.

The organization, called The Jetty Foundation, was incorporated in June by art collector and former investment banker Greg Allen. While Allen lives in Washington, he was was born and raised in Utah. Allen is best known in art circles for spending ten years as the co-chairman of the Museum of Modern Art’s Junior Associates fundraising adjunct and for editing the well-regarded blog greg.org. Other Jetty Foundation trustees include Allen’s wife Jean Cottam and Spence Kinard, a Utahan who was a reporter for KSL-TV and the voice of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Kinard has also been the president of the University of Utah Alumni Association and has served on the board of trustees of the University of Utah. He is also a past chairman of the Radio and Television News Directors Association. (Full disclosure: I’ve known Allen for many years and consider him a friend.) [Image: Spiral Jetty on July 2, 2011. Image via Flickr user Bryce W. Garner.]

DNR does not have a formal process by which it accepts a lease application, but Allen said that the DNR’s sovereign lands program coordinator, Ryan Nesbitt, told him that DNR had received The Jetty Foundation’s application and that on Tuesday DNR cashed the check that Allen used to pay The Jetty Foundation’s $300 application fee.

The status of the lease for the land on which Spiral Jetty sets has been an open question since early June. The Dia Art Foundation, which owns Spiral Jetty and which had held the lease since it acquired the work in 1999 and the DNR have been engaged in a month-long process during which DNR is determining whether or not Dia’s lease for the land on which Spiral Jetty sits is up-to-date, and if not whether to simply issue Dia a new lease. That decision – or a decision to award the lease to The Jetty Foundation or another entity – is entirely at the discretion of DNR.

“The idea behind The Jetty Foundation is to give human voices and ears to the artwork within the state of Utah,” Allen told MAN. “A lot of people in the state who care about the work don’t have a forum for expressing concerns and interests or in bringing things that bear on the work to the attention of its owner. If we receive the lease, we would be that forum that provides a local standing for addressing some of these issues. Most are site-related and are not related to the work or its conservation, which I think is Dia’s primary responsibility.”

Allen said that if The Jetty Foundation receives the lease that it would be a Utah-based organization focused on engaging with both the state and non-governmental organizations such as conservation groups on a range of Great Salt Lake and watershed issues that could impact Spiral Jetty. It would also immediately work to add Utah stake-holders to its board, particularly local conservation leaders, museum officials, representatives from organizations with a particular interest in lake-use and the like. Allen envisions that the organization’s budget would be no more than a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, raised from private individuals and foundations.

“The main strength of the foundation should be its board and the positions its members hold in Utah,” Allen said, adding that he is traveling to Utah next week to begin foundation-related conversations. “We’d also create an advisory council, a network of partners and friends and interested people and experts who are involved on an awareness building level.”

Allen stressed that he didn’t want The Jetty Foundation to be seen as a Dia rival, and that he admired the work Dia has done to bring in the Getty Conservation Institute in 2009.

“I made very clear in my application letter that by creating this foundation and by pursuing this lease, we are acknowledging fully the artist’s estate as the owner of the intellectual property of the artwork and Dia as the owner of the title of the artwork (as donated by the estate). I was making no claims on any of those items. I think that’s a distinction that the state itself had not really thought through in its own process. I can envision a time when Dia is represented on the board of The Jetty Foundation [if we receive the lease]. If Dia decides to take on a more active role in engaging the local community and the local institutions there, I can see a foundation taking on a facilitating role. If Dia is, for whatever reason, not doing what it is that the artwork requires, then the foundation would be more active. I think it’s fluid and to be determined.”

However, the emergence of The Jetty Foundation as a potential lessee could be considered a response to Dia’s recent history of trailing Utah-based, Jetty-related developments. In early 2008, Dia was unaware that the possible development of oil resources near the Jetty was reaching a critical point until an email distributed by Robert Smithson’s widow Nancy Holt was published on MAN. Other blogs picked up the story and a blogs-driven campaign fended off that threat. Eight months later a series of posts on MAN revealed that Spiral Jetty was at risk from much more than just that one one possible oil exploration. (A 2009 update found Dia concerned with new mineral extraction proposals and pledging to think “more holistically” about Spiral Jetty.)

As evidenced by the lease expiration, questions remain about whether Dia is as engaged with political and bureaucratic processes in Utah as it might be. Last month Dia director of external affairs Katie Sonnenborn told MAN that Dia is not contributing to either of the state bodies that are considering the Great Salt Lake’s future. One process, the DNR’s Draft Great Salt Lake Management Plan Revision began in February, 2010 and will recommended strategies for making decisions on proposals that come to the state, such as leases related to mineral extraction. Sonnenborn said that Dia did not contribute comment on the draft plan.

The other ongoing GSL-related process is happening before the Great Salt Lake Advisory Council, which was created during the Utah legislature’s 2010 session. The Council is examining the existing management of the Great Salt Lake, is making recommendations for improvements and is making available state grants for research.  Dia has not been involved with the GSLAC either, though Sonnenborn said that Dia made a presentation to GSLAC’s predecessor body in 2008.

However, according to Lynn de Freitas, the executive director of Friends of the Great Salt Lake, the currently constituted GSLAC is not the same body Dia addressed in 2008. “Unfortunately when the recommendations from the group that Dia addressed, the one created by then-Gov. Jon Huntsman, ran through the legislative process, it came through the other side as what we have now, the Great Salt Lake Advisory Council,” de Freitas said. “That means that the what the legislature created kind of re-created the process Gov. Huntsman started. They are almost back to step one.” de Freitas added that the process that Huntsman started would have created a commission with sovereignty over GSL-related development. That kind of commission may be eventually recommended by this version of the GSLAC, an outcome FoGSL thinks is important for the GSL’s future.

A DNR spokesperson has not returned a phone call from MAN. The department last commented on the Jetty lease situation on June 23, when it told MAN that a lease decision was possible by June 24.

Update, 4:23 pm, 7/7/11: Allen blogs about why his new foundation has applied for the Jetty-related lease.

The Dia Art Foundation says that it believes its lease payments for the land on which Robert Smithson’s iconic Spiral Jetty sculpture sits are up-to-date, and that the death of a Utah Department of Natural Resources offical with whom Dia had been discussing the renewal of its lease may explain confusion that erupted yesterday when a Utah newspaper reported that Dia’s lease for the land under Spiral Jetty had expired.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the Utah Department of Natural Resources claimed Dia had missed a deadline to renew the lease for the 10 acres of land on which Spiral Jetty sits, and that as a result it was up to the DNR’s Division for Forestry, Fire and State Lands as to whether a lease for the land would go back up for bid. Smithson’s widow, artist Nancy Holt, transferred the work and the relevant lease to the Dia Art Foundation in 1999. The lease was for 20 years. [Image: Spiral Jetty on May 17, 2011 via Flickr user sphansen47.]

“Last February we received an invoice from the Department of Natural Resources asking for the lease [to be paid],” Dia director Philippe Vergne told me today. “We paid it just as we’ve done since 1999. It was ‘business as usual’ until yesterday, until we got a phone call from a journalist. In the meantime, we received a fax from Utah saying that the lease is up, you haven’t renewed it.”

Vergne said that Dia believes that the confusion likely dates to about a year ago, shortly after Dia began to discuss lease renewal with the DNR. “There was an understanding we would renew the lease and there was some nitty-gritty details we were discussing,” Vergne said, adding that while Dia was in the midst of that conversation, the DNR official who was Dia’s contact died. As a result of his death, contact between Dia and DNR was cut off.

That conversation did not resume with a new DNR official. (Vergne says that Dia never heard from that person.) However, Dia continued to receive invoices from DNR and Vergne says that Dia paid those invoices in both 2010 and 2011, and that the Utah DNR cashed both checks. Vergne said that should demonstrate Dia’s intent to renew the lease even if lines of communication faltered.

“We understood that since they sent us an invoice, that was a sign we were continuing the lease,” Vergne said. “So we paid it.”

Then, yesterday, DNR told the Salt Lake Tribune that Dia was no longer a leaseholder.

“We called them right away and we told them that this is strange,” Vergne said. “We’d been working together for many years and there was no question about any of this. We have all these correspondences with you [pertaining to lease renewal]. They acknowledged that. We are talking with them now and we assume that’s going to be solved swiftly today or tomorrow. My understanding is that it was an administrative or computer glitch. We are aggressively trying to solve it. They were very apologetic and told us that there’s a process in place that they’d need to go through.”

DNR spokesperson Jason Curry confirmed Vergne’s account, except to say that he wasn’t sure that the situation would be resolved as soon as Friday. “We hope to get it done as soon as possible,” Curry said. “We have a lot of rule-of-law to go through to make sure everything’s in compliance.” Curry confirmed that the division’s sovereign lands program coordinator had received numerous phone calls from individuals interested in the lease, but said that the DNR wasn’t making any kind of list of interested bidders.