Land Arts students at the Great Salt Lake 2023.  Photo: Monty Paret

WRITTEN BY JULIA LYON

It was during a contemporary art class trip to Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty,” with its swirl of earth and lake, when art historian Monty Paret realized he wanted to share the history of land art with more students.

“I began understanding what incredible local assets we have here,” the Associate Professor of Art History said.

Many Utahns have heard of Smithson’s world-famous earthwork in the Great Salt Lake and Nancy Holt’s “Sun Tunnels” in Utah’s West Desert. But Paret knew there was so much more to explore.

With nearby resources like the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, The Center for Land Use Interpretation in Wendover, and younger artists creating new kinds of land art — raising questions about the climate crisis, land use, and environmental justice — Paret decided to develop a course focusing exclusively on land art.

He was determined to go beyond stereotypes.

“There’s such a great variety of artistic practices, intentions, and aesthetics at play here,” Paret said. “Students in the class quickly realize that the history of land art and the politics around land use in contemporary art is so much more than a couple of yahoos with a bulldozer.”

Land arts class led by Associate Professor Monty Paret (left) in Utah Museum of Fine Arts collections storage looking at works by Tacita Dean, Robert Smithson, and Nancy Holt in 2024.
Photo: Adelaide Ryder

Land arts class at Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty 2019.  Photo: Monty Paret.

An early influence on the course, which launched in 2009, was artist and geographer Trevor Paglen and his critical approach to thinking about landscapes, power, and the built environment.

“That work opened up new ways of thinking for me — not just art in the land, but artists whose work has social and political implications for how we think about and understand land, how it’s used, its histories and possible futures,” Paret said. “These are important questions here in Utah.”

The course continues to evolve, drawing students from across campus studying studio art, environmental humanities, art history, English, and more. For many, the class impacts them personally and professionally.

“Like all really thoughtful college courses, Monty’s class not only opened my mind to seeing the world differently but also looking at it with more curiosity and with a deep critical eye. His land art course opened the west for me — which I think I felt ambivalent about at best prior,” said Laura Hurtado, Executive Director of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.

“Thinking deeply about the politics of geographies, the history and non-neutrality of seemingly empty spaces, and the way artists have continued to mark the land and ask questions — all started in his course — has continued to yield meaning for me years later as a curator, a writer and as a museum director.”

Doug Tolman, a visual artist who is now Policy Manager with Save Our Canyons, took the class both as an undergraduate and graduate student.

“Prior to taking the course, I viewed most forms of land art or landscape art as using the landscape as a canvas to paste a concept onto — which I think a lot of people, myself included, found troublesome,” said Tolman.

“Seeing land use and environmental issues through an art lens provided me with a unique way of problem solving and seeing the world,” he said.

One of Paret’s main goals is to help students understand land is always contested.

“We have this tendency to think of land and landscape as neutral pre-existing space we make decisions about,” he said. “But it has histories. It’s dynamic and has many different stakeholders.”

Artists, he explains, can play a huge role in highlighting that trajectory.

Though Paret continues to take students to iconic works such as “Spiral Jetty,” he also creates options for site visits closer to campus or farther afield. This winter the class visited collections storage in the Utah Museum of Fine Arts to see drawings by Robert Smithson and photographs by Nancy Holt along with pieces by other land and environmental artists.

Students have also been invited to Powder Mountain, the ski resort near Eden, Utah, to see the growing art collection across the slopes, part of a new project by the Powder Art Foundation.

He and students will tour the “collection” on skis, Paret said, learning more about its purpose and probably asking some hard questions.

“I love the fact that a lot of the pieces are scattered and almost happy discoveries the skiers are meant to engage with,” said Cuauhtemoc "C-moc" Sandoval, a graduate student in the class. “The more we can get people to engage with art in that way, outside the traditional museum or gallery space, the more you can show the different dimensions art can be.”

Over the years, the land art course has grown to include more indigenous art works and voices, as well as women from all backgrounds.

“There’s been a lot more research into recovering those artistic practices that were produced by women artists, but were not always written about and framed in that way,” the Associate Professor said. “It’s not that they weren’t there — it’s that some of us as art historians were doing a bad job at realizing they’re a critical part of that conversation.”

This year’s course included some of those female artists such as Ana Mendieta, Michelle Stuart, Lita Albuquerque, and Jackie Amézquita.

Paret anticipates the course will continue to change and grow.

In 2025, he spent 10 weeks learning even more about land art by participating in the innovative Land Arts of the American West field program developed by Chris Taylor at Texas Tech University. As a field resident with that program, Paret traveled over 5,000 miles meeting with artists, activists, and scholar, visiting archaeological and ecological sites, environmental and mining ruins, as well as more typical land art sites.

“That was an amazing experience,” he reflected. “I’m now trying to incorporate aspects of it into the classroom and field experiences for students here at the U.”

For Paret’s students, his passion for the topic is clear.

“When you’re really engaged in the material, that comes across,” Paret said. That’s a huge part of a successful class.”