Essay #1 response

While Spiral Jetty is an interesting piece of artwork, I personally, do not think that its presence in the Great Salt Lake is enough to classify The Great Salt Lake as a museum. There are several reasons for my opinion. The first reason is that if you look at the What is a Museum? page on the American Association of Museums, you can see that Spiral Jetty does not meet the requirement of being somewhat educational in nature. One could make the argument that many art museums are not educational in nature in the traditional sense however the displays in the museum will at least have the title of the piece, who created it and what medium was used. These museums also educate people about the world of art in general. Another reason for my opinion is that Spiral Jetty is only one single piece of artwork in the Great Salt Lake. When I think of museums I see them as having more than one piece of art work in their collection. In addition to this, another reason behind my thinking is that the Great Salt Lake does not have one full time director who is in charge of overseeing exhibits of the Great Salt Lake. Having a full time director is one of the criteria that a museum must meet to be considered a museum by the American Association of Museums. Another reason for my thinking that Spiral Jetty does not qualify the Great Salt Lake as a museum is that Spiral Jetty was underwater for decades. In my line of thinking, for a place to qualify as a museum it needs to have most of its exhibits on display. In the case of Spiral Jetty this was not possible because it spent a few decades under water. It is because of all these reasons I do not think Spiral Jetty qualifies the Great Salt Lake as a museum.