Art standoff intensifies
Mass MoCA sues to display artist's work
The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is pushing to display Swiss artist Christoph Büchel's massive unfinished installation -- which brings indoors an oil tanker, a smashed police car, and a two-story home --against his wishes.
After failing to coax Büchel to complete "Training Ground for Democracy," Mass MoCA filed a civil suit Monday to allow the public to see the work. In the meantime, the museum announced that it will allow visitors to walk past the assembled materials, which have been collected inside the football-field-size Building 5, to view a quickly developed new show, "Made at Mass MoCA," about how the institution collaborates with artists.
There's a twist: the raw materials Büchel gathered around the Berkshires to make "Training Ground" will be covered by tarps.
In an interview yesterday, Mass MoCA director Joseph Thompson was asked why the museum hasn't just canceled the show, which has been embroiled in controversy for months.
"Our visitors have rights," Thompson said. "The people who support the museum and who gave objects for this show, the dozens and dozens of people and businesses who put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into it, I feel an obligation to them as well." He said "space constraints" demanded that "Made at Mass MoCA" be staged at one end of the enormous gallery where the Büchel show was planned.
The artist began installing objects last year, with the show slated to open in December. Since then, Büchel and Mass MoCA have been at an impasse, with the dispute likelier to get more tense now that the museum has brought the artist to court.
Büchel's attorney, Donn Zaretsky , who learned of the lawsuit Monday afternoon, said the artist is weighing his own legal options. He called Mass MoCA's behavior "appalling."
"To show an unfinished work like this is just unprecedented and really shabby treatment of an artist," said Zaretsky.
The dispute has stumped curators and artists, who say they find it hard to choose sides. "I just feel the whole thing is heartbreaking," said Nicholas Baume , chief curator of Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art.
The Büchel case does raise questions about the process of commissioning artists, and what an institution should do when relations break down. At issue is Zaretsky's contention that Mass MoCA never had a contract with Büchel specifying the scope and cost of "Training Ground." Thompson said that he made the limits clear, and that Mass MoCA doubled the museum's roughly $160,000 budget when Büchel's aspirations for the piece grew.
Büchel would not respond to a request for comment yesterday, but his attorney said the museum should have known what to expect.
"Christoph went up last summer and built a model of the work and then they said, 'Great, let's do it,' " said Zaretsky. "And it ended up being more expensive than they expected, and so they ran out of money and said, 'We can't do the work you originally proposed but let's finish it up anyway.' So it isn't like he went over budget."
In a statement yesterday, Thompson said: "Our agreement with Christoph Büchel is based on a series of letters, e - mails, discussions, and plans which defined the installation's location, timeline, and budget. . . . The materials which comprise the agreement will be produced in the due course of our litigation."
Yesterday, Zaretsky provided a letter he sent this month to Thompson in which he demanded that Mass MoCA no longer allow people to see Büchel's unfinished work. (Some curators, politicians, and the Globe were allowed to walk through earlier in the year.)
The letter also asked Thompson to retract his statement that there was a written agreement about the cost and timing of the project.
If these conditions cannot be met, "then there is nothing further to discuss," the letter read. "You can go ahead and cancel the exhibition and dispose of any materials not claimed by the artist."
Zaretsky said yesterday that by showing Büchel's work against his wishes, the museum was violating the Visual Artists Rights Act, or VARA, a federal law that protects the rights of artists. Boston attorney Lucy Lovrien, who concentrates on intellectual property, art, and publishing issues, said yesterday she had never heard of a case like this.
"I think that it's possible if the museum is incredibly accurate and narrow about what they're saying and showing people, it might not be a technical violation of VARA," said Lovrien. "But I have to say, it feels unfair."
Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers @globe.com. For more on the arts go to boston.com/ae/ theater_arts/exhibitionist. 