Smithson's "Floating Island Vision Materializes

 

Robert Smithson revered Frederick Law Olmsted and envisioned a floating island for Manhattan, a kind of a miniature Central Park.

Artists Robert Smithson's most famous art work is the Spiral Jetty, a 1,500-foot-coil of black basalt rocks and earth that juts out into the Great Salt Lake in Utah. In 1970, three years before he died in a plane crash, he sketched a rough drawing of a “floating island,” a project he never realized. But in the fall of 2004 when the Whitney Museum of American Art was preparing for the Smithson retrospective, the museum, along with Minetta Brook, a public arts organization, and Smithson’s estate decided to make the island a reality. Artist Nancy Holt, Smithson’s widow, became involved, as did landscape architect Diana Balmori, a contractor, an engineer, a project manager and art workers. The James Cohan Gallery, which represents the estate, contributed money and helped round up donors.

"Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan Island" did just that September 17-25, 2005. The island cost about $200,000, compared with another New York City temporal public art work, Christo's $21 million “The Gates.”