Spiral Jetty of the Great Salt Lake

One of the great questions about museums is, what does it take to be one? Most people have a view that a museum is an entity that is completely controlled by man and is made up of exhibits and collections. If this is the definition of a museum, could a museum exist in nature? I believe that a museum can not exist in nature, a museum is a something that is built by man and shows objects at one period in time. Nature is constantly changing which is the opposite of the main objective of a museum. This leads me into the Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake; even though it is a piece of art that is making a statement about the relationship of the environment and art, it is not a piece of art in a museum. It is a long stretch to consider the Great Salt Lake a museum and the Spiral Jetty an exhibit. As I had said previously one of the key ideas of a museum is to preserve its collections so that they can not change, the Great Salt Lake cannot be a museum because the Spiral Jetty is constantly undergoing changes caused by the forces of nature. The Spiral Jetty was not even visible for many years because the water had risen in the lake. I believe that the creator of the Spiral Jetty would have not called the lake a museum, he said that “Nature does not proceed in a straight line” and also “Nature is never finished” which leads me to believe that he thought that his art work would not remain in the condition that he finished with. He knew that nature would have its way with it and later what he had done. His piece was to keep changing as time goes on which is opposite to the nature of a museum.