When art falls apart…
Over the last few months, I’ve become fascinated with an ongoing legal battle between museum and artist in North Adams, MA. The story seems to be coming to a close once and for all.
Here is a recent article from the NY Times (the Boston Globe covered it extensively as well). The crux of the issue was this: the museum fought for the right to display an unfinished work by Christoph Büchel after their working relationship fell apart (they spent a bunch of money and he refused to finish the exhibit). A Federal District Court judge in Springfield MA ruled last Friday that showing unfinished work by an artist was not a violation of the Visual Artists Rights Act and gave Mass MOCA the legal go-ahead to open the unfinished installation, titled “Training Ground for Democracy” should they choose to do so.
The most recent development is that Mass MOCA has decided to dismantle the work entirely without showing it to the public (although they did show an obstructed viewing of the work while the court case was pending which is reported on here).
There are many issues with this case and the art world is up in arms about it. From where I sit, it seems like everyone involved handled this poorly. The artist contends there was never a fixed budget for the project, which I find very hard to believe. It seems unfathomable to me that an arts institution originally chartered by the state would bring in an artist to create a giant installation piece and not agree on a budget before work began (especially one built in a run-down Mill town as an economic driver for the western part of Massachusetts). The museum says the artist refused months of negotiation offers to continue work on the project and resolve the situation but that seems strange to me too. Artists want their work to be shown - why wouldn’t the artist work it out and get it done if equitable compromises were being offered? Was it really so bad that it was worth going to court over (on both sides)?
This situation saddens me from a programmatic and management perspective. The audiences in North Adams, MA and the surrounding areas have waited through months of controversy with the hope of seeing the work and now it will simply vanish forever. The reputation of Mass MOCA in the art world will suffer due to how they chose to handle the situation. Christoph Büchel may loose future invitations or opportunities from other U.S. museums.
Seems like a lose-lose all around. How could this happen?
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