The Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) has been prohibited from proceeding with the demolition of Mary Miss’s “Greenwood Pond: Double Site” (1996) land art installation until further notice by Stephen Locher, a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. The decision to grant Miss’s bid for a temporary restraining order came Monday, April 8 — the same day DMAC intended to begin dismantling the work.
After months of advocating for the protection of her deteriorating ecological installation project at Greenwood Park, Miss filed a legal complaint against DMAC on April 4 alleging that the Center failed to both “reasonably protect and maintain the project against the ravages of time, vandalism and the elements” in violation of its 1994 contract with her and to include her in the process of its decision to demolish the work.
“I am pleased and relieved by Judge Locher’s decision not only for what it has done for ‘Greenwood Pond: Double Site,’ but because it reaffirms the rights of all artists and the integrity of their legacies,” Miss said in a statement shared with Hyperallergic. “Let’s use this opportunity to reach an outcome of which we can all be proud.”
DMAC Director Kelly Baum notified Miss last October that the installation, consisting of various wooden, metallic, and concrete landscape features that integrated viewers with the Greenwood Pond’s ecology, was in a state of disrepair and had to be closed to the public in order to undergo a “complete structural review.” Miss stressed the importance of the work to Baum at the time and told Hyperallergic that she felt blindsided by the Center’s decision in January to move forward with demolishing the artwork as a matter of “public safety.” The Center cited its commitment to the city of Des Moines after blaming the artwork’s dilapidation on the “ephemeral” materials Miss used for the project as well as the harsh Iowa climate.
Miss’s legal complaint not only alleges that the Center violated its contract with her but also that it breached the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 through the “destruction of a work of recognized stature, and any intentional or grossly negligent destruction of that work.”
Judge Locher’s decision underscored that Miss had established a threat of irreparable harm if the demolition proceeds as the installation “can never be restored,” and agreed that the Center failed to obtain written consent from Miss to “intentionally damage, alter, relocate, modify or change the work” as outlined in the artist agreement, noting that the city has never “ordered, directed, or otherwise ‘required’ the Art Center to remove the artwork.”
A spokesperson for the Center told Hyperallergic that DMAC “respect[s] the court’s decision, and will be pausing plans to remove the artwork from Greenwood Park,” adding that portions of the walkway declared “dangerous and unsalvageable” will remain enclosed in protective fencing.
A secondary hearing is slated to take place within the next two weeks.
Thanks for covering this story. As an Iowa resident and occasional visitor to the Des Moines Art Center, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I’m sympathetic to the artist’s desire to maintain her work in the long run. At the same time, DMAC’s concerns for the costs of maintenance and safety of visitors are certainly legitimate. Can any artist to expect that an outdoor installation will be maintained in a pristine state for all time? If so, there is a limited choice of materials and structural elements that can be expected to hold up. Iowa is visited by tornadoes, derechos, and other adverse climatic conditions, and given the trajectory of climate change, that’s not going to get any better. Is it reasonable to expect the museum to restore an outdoor installation, no matter the cost? How does that affect the overall operating budget of the museum and resulting limitations of what other art can be acquired and shown to the public? I hope the author would continue to explore these issues in the case of Miss vs. DMAC. There is likely much more here than is evident at first glance.