The Des Moines Art Center, a contemporary art museum in Iowa, has reached a settlement with artist Mary Miss after a dispute over the destruction of a decaying installation titled Greenwood Pond: Double Site that it commissioned from her in 1996.
The settlement, which resulted in the museum paying Miss a sum of $900,000 to move forward with the demolition, comes after a year-long effort by the artist and The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), a cultural advocacy group in Washington D.C., to pressure the Art Center to raise enough funds to preserve the work.
In fall 2024, the museum cited several physical and financial limitations to Miss as the reasons hindering the institution from being able to save it. Miss filed a lawsuit in April 2024, a few months after the Art Center had explored options internally with its board of trustees to finance the restoration.
According to the center’s director, Kelly Baum, ultimately, they found that the cost of $8 million to restore and maintain, as well as keep full-time staff to oversee it in the future, would be too costly, and the board was unable to finance the project through private donations. Baum stated in a December 2023 email to Miss that the institution “does not and will not ever have the money to remake it.”
After launching a campaign to attract endorsements from art historians and former curators to move the dispute forward, Miss alleged in legal complaint filed in April that the museum had breached its 1994 contract with her that stipulated they would plan to preserve the work in perpetuity. The museum attributed the decision to remove the piece from their campus as a public safety matter. The center maintained that the sculptural installation, made of wood parts composed around the outdoor elements of the museum’s grounds and surrounding lagoon, had faced “irreparable” damage over the years.
The following month, in early May, an Iowa judge issued a decision to block the demolition of Greenwood Pond: Double Site, leading to a stalemate between the artist and DMAC. The court ruled the museum did not have the legal ability to dismantle the artwork without the artist agreeing, but also that the center wasn’t financially liable for restoring it to its original condition.
Restoration costs were estimated to be around $2.6 million. According to testimony given by Baum during legal hearings, the cost to dismantle the work is estimated around $350,000, making the museum’s payment for the ordeal around $1.3 million.
(As part of the settlement, Miss will donate a portion of the funds to a newly established fund run by the TCLF to finance threatened site-specific art works.)
