Mary Miss Sues Des Moines Art Center to Prevent Demolition of Major Land Art Work

Land artist Mary Miss has filed suit against the Des Moines Art Center to stop the institution fromtearing downherGreenwood Pond: Double Site, 1989–96, an outdoor installation commissioned by the museum for its permanent collection in 1994. Citing the work—a series of structures adjacent to a lagoon—as a danger to the public and the cost of repairing it as beyond its means, the museum hadplannedto begin removing it on April 8.

In commissioning the work, the Art Center had contracted with Miss to “reasonably protect and maintain the project against the ravages of time, vandalism and the elements.” However,Greenwood Pond, which is made of treated metal, wood, mesh, and concrete, had deteriorated in recent years under the museum’s stewardship. In her suit, filed on April 4 in US District Court for the Southern District of Iowa’s Central Division, the artist accused the museum of failing to properly care for the work. She asserted that the museum’s dismantling ofGreenwood Pondwould violate theVisual Artists Rights Actof 1990, which gives artists the right to “prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature.” The work is thought to be the first urban wetland project in the United States. Miss is seeking a temporary restraining order against the museum until the matter can be resolved in court. A hearing is set for Monday.

Greenwood Pond sits alongside its namesake body of water, which occupies Greenwood Park, on which the Art Center is also sited. The museum earlier this year noted that it had signed a 1990 agreement with the city, which owns the land, agreeing to “correct any unsafe conditions within a work of art sited inside” the park. The museum contended that it had performed regular maintenance and, in 2015, a partial repair of the work. The Cultural Landscape Foundation, a national advocacy nonprofit based in Washington, DC, that has been lobbying for the preservation of the work, pointed out that Miss’s South Cove, 1984–87, an outdoor work in New York City made of like materials and similarly allowing access to water, survived both 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy. 

“Getting involved with attorneys is the last possible solution, but I don’t think we had any other choice at this point,” Miss told the New York Times. Artforum has reached out to the Art Center for comment.