A famous work by environmental artist Mary Miss is to be demolished by the museum that commissioned it.
On Tuesday, the Des Moines Art Center reached an agreement with Miss, 80, to demolish her vast outdoor installation, “Greenwood Pond: Double Site,” in exchange for $900,000, which she signed last April. Her lawsuit against the museum seeking preservation has ended. .
The Des Moines Art Center invited Miss to develop site-specific work for city-owned parks in the late 1980s. In late 2023, the museum informed her that the installation – a network of curving walkways, cantilevered bridges and seating areas designed to encourage visitors to interact with the landscape – was a safety hazard. and warned that there was a risk of collapse. The museum said replacing the deteriorated materials would cost between $2 million and $2.6 million, an amount it cannot afford.
Eliminating jobs also proved to be quite costly. In addition to paying Miss, the Des Moines Art Center estimates it will cost as much as $350,000 to demolish Greenwood Pond: Double Site, according to testimony from curator Kelly Baum. There is. That would bring the total cost of settlement to $1.25 million (not counting attorney fees).
“This settlement ends the breach of contract lawsuit filed by Mis on April 4, 2024, and allows the Des Moines Art Center to move forward with its previously stated plan to remove the entire artwork,” the museum said in a statement. mentioned in.
In an interview, Misu said she felt “complicated” about the resolution.
“I have been working in obscurity for a long time, and here the destroyed work makes itself visible again,” she said.
In the 1970s and '80s, Myss was part of a group of prominent artists who sought to change the way viewers experienced sculpture by taking it outside of the white cube. Her work appeared on the cover of Artforum magazine in 1978, a crowning achievement for any artist. But decades later, her often subtle architectural interventions made of wood, concrete, and other humble materials faded from view.
She has been in the academic spotlight again in recent years, but it was the impending demolition of Greenwood Pond: A Double Site that rallied supporters around her and made headlines. “I feel so grateful, but also so sad about how this happened,” Miss said.
The artist plans to donate a portion of the settlement to the Cultural Landscape Foundation, the education and advocacy organization that led the movement against the destruction of the work. The funding will be used to support the establishment of a new fund to defend public artworks at risk.
“This is a tragedy for the field of art history and for the place of art in our society,” said Suzanne Beaver, associate professor of art history at Texas A&M University and author of a book on American environmental art. spoke. . “I felt that the moment had finally come for the environmental and ecological art projects created by women to be recognized and valued.”
The battle over Greenwood Pond pits one artist against a former patron, making it particularly difficult for a small institution in an environment of increasingly extreme weather conditions to preserve an ambitious piece of public art. It highlighted the difficulty of doing so. In May, a U.S. District Court judge in Des Moines granted the artist's request for a preliminary injunction to temporarily halt the work's demolition.
Some of the works will not be exhibited to the public until the end of 2023. According to the museum, the wood from the house decks used to create Greenwood Pond could not withstand Iowa's harsh climate. The film cost $1.5 million to produce. The museum said it has already spent nearly $1 million on restoration.
Greenwood Pond, created between 1989 and 1996, is one of the few environmental installations in an American museum and is considered one of the first urban wetland projects in the country. For more than seven years, Miss worked with local indigenous communities, botanists and others to restore the pond to its original wetland condition.
Architectural elements such as observation towers and recessed seating areas offer visitors “a unique opportunity to develop a closer relationship with nature and gain a deeper understanding of our place in the world as active observers and stewards. '' said Nasher Sculpture Curator Lee Arnold. center of dallas. Miss also participated in the 2023 exhibition “Granswell: Women in Land Art.” “I worry that its demise is indicative of our culture's general attitude toward complex ideas and situations that require thoughtfulness and persistence to resolve.”
