The dispute over the fate of artist Mary Miss’s Land art environment in Des Moines, Iowa, is at a stalemate after a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, Stephen Locher, granted a preliminary injunction Friday (May 3). has issued. blocking the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) from demolishing the outdoor installation.
Judge Locher agreed with Ms.’s contention that her contract with DMAC was concluded on the first assignment Greenwood Pond: dual location (1996) prevents the arts center from demolishing the work without its permission, which it has not given. However, the judge also ruled that the contract gives DMAC the right to refuse to repair the work if it believes the costs are too high. The art center has estimated the cost of repairing Miss’s work at more than $2.6 million. an estimate that the artist has disputed.
In his order, Judge Locher writes that “neither party is entitled to what they want,” blocking DMAC from demolition Greenwood Pond: dual location and Madam cannot force the art center to restore her work. “The end result is therefore an unsatisfactory status quo: the work of art will remain standing (for the time being) despite being in a condition that no one likes, but which the court cannot order anyone to change.”
In a statement, Ms welcomed the judge’s order. “I am grateful for Judge Locher’s ruling and I hope it opens the door for consultation on the future of the site, which I was denied,” she said.
The ruling “ruled that the Des Moines Art Center cannot remove Greenwood Pond: dual location, even the large areas that were declared unrecoverable and dangerous last fall, without permission from Mary Miss,” a spokesperson for the arts center said in a statement. “The court also ruled that the Des Moines Art Center is not required to rebuild or renovate the work. We are exploring our options to find a solution to the standoff ordered by the court. In the meantime, we will maintain the existing fencing around the hazardous areas of the property and engage the City of Des Moines to address public safety concerns at Greenwood Park.”
The work in question consists of a series of architectural and landscape interventions by Miss in and around a pond in Greenwood Park, a public park adjacent to the site of the Des Moines Art Center. It includes a curved walkway, a pagoda-like structure, a boardwalk that appears to descend into the water, and a sunken space where visitors can descend to eye level with the pond’s surface.
The arts center estimates that it has spent nearly $1 million maintaining the installation since its completion in 1996. Still, parts of the installation have been considered dangerous and closed to the public since last fall. Just as demolition was set to begin in early April, Miss sued the art center and Judge Locher issued a temporary restraining order blocking the demolition. Miss, her supporters and representatives of the DMAC appeared in federal court in Des Moines on April 18 for a hearing on the dispute.
Judge Locher added in his order that Ms’s claim that the integrity of Greenwood Pond: dual location is protected under the Visual Artists Rights Act 1990 (Vara) “has little chance of success” because it is not one of the types of art listed as protected in that legislation. Under Vara, protected works of art are defined as “painting, drawing, print or sculpture,” leaving open-air land art environments like Ms.’s seemingly unprotected. “It’s quite a task even to refer to it [Greenwood Pond: Double Site’s] structures as sculptures in a metaphorical sense; they are certainly not sculptures in the literal sense of the word,” Judge Locher concludes.
In a statement, Charles A. Birnbaum, the president and chief executive of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., which has campaigned for the preservation of Ms. environment, said: “Although the court has stated that the artwork is not Real is a sculpture and does not fall within the definition of ‘sculpture’ under Vara, we expect that expert testimony at trial – if it comes to that – will demonstrate that Land art is sculpture (e.g. Robert Smithson’s Spiral scaffolding) and especially that this land art, Greenwood Pond: dual locationwas included as a sculpture in the DMAC permanent collection.”