Salt Lake City, UT · 2025
Wake the Great Salt Lake
Wake the Great Salt Lake — twelve artist installations across Salt Lake City confronting the lake's ecological decline through pop-up, temporary, and roadside public art created with Indigenous communities, scientists, and advocates.
- Artworks
- 7
- Neighborhoods
- 5
- Attendance
- 18,000
- Press hits
- 26
The project
Wake the Great Salt Lake
Salt Lake City has been an especially collaborative partner in adapting Wake the Great Salt Lake across 12 artist installation sites, many of which are temporary — lasting from a single evening to several weeks. To meet these unique conditions, the city extended the branding by creating temporary, portable signage and branded pop-up elements that could move from site to site. This allowed the identity to stay consistent even as installations changed locations or operated for only short durations.
Wayfinding has played an important role in these activations, most recently through sidewalk clings for Nick Pedersen's Here Today, Gone Tomorrow billboards and the opening of Trevor Dahl's Watchers of the Shore. Materials have included sidewalk clings, signs, lamp post clings, yard signs, and banners.
Press & coverage
- ForbesDazzling Art Inspires People To Save Utah's Shrinking Great Salt Lake →
- The New York TimesOlafur Eliasson Uses Art and Sound to Raise Climate Awareness in Utah →
- PBSUtah art project spotlights Great Salt Lake's fragile future →
- The Art NewspaperOlafur Eliasson stages public wake for the Great Salt Lake in Utah →
- Smithsonian MagazineA Glowing Sphere Towering Over Utah Sent an Urgent Artistic Message: The Great Salt Lake Is Drying Up →
- DesignBoomOlafur Eliasson and the shift from perception to participation →
- The Salt Lake Tribune"A symphony of disappearing sounds for the Great Salt Lake" is free in Utah →
- The Art NewspaperOlafur Eliasson's next project raises alarm over the decline of Utah's Great Salt Lake →
Lessons learned
Sustained press momentum required a dedicated comms partner from week one — not month three. Community advisory groups doubled attendance at activation events.
Library