East and West Shaking Hands at Laying [of] Last Rail

~Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty was built in the spring of 1970 along a remote portion of the northern shoreline of the Great Salt Lake (fig. 2). The Jetty’s physical monumentality (6,650 tons of rock and mud forming a spiral over a quarter-mile long) is matched by its art-historical...

Chronology 1500–2000

In the fall of 1773, James Boswell and Dr. Samuel Johnson embarked on a tour to the Hebrides in Scotland. On their way they spent two days at Armadale on the Isle of Skye, waiting for a favorable wind for their vessel to carry them northward. While at Armadale, Boswell wrote: