Joyce Kozloff Writes in Support of "Greenwood Pond: Double Site"
On February 13, 2024, Joyce Kozloff wrote the following letter to the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) Director Kelly Baum concerning plans to demolish Greenwood Pond: Double Site, a site-specific installation by the internationally acclaimed leader of the land art movement, Mary Miss, commissioned for the Art Center’s permanent collection. The work, which opened in 1996, is in a diminished condition with some sections fenced off, suggesting the DMAC has not fulfilled its contractual obligation to “reasonably protect and maintain” the work. The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) is calling for the DMAC to reverse it demolition decision and, instead, to engage in meaningful consultations with the artist and others to find a solution that restores the artwork and develops a long-term, ongoing maintenance plan.
Dear Kelly Baum:
The news of the potential dismantling of Mary Miss’s wonderful artwork, “Greenwood Pond: Double Site” has been so disheartening! It is a piece that many of us know, even if we haven’t been to Des Moines, as its ripples have spread beyond its actual location. It is a work that triggered many of the artist’s other projects – it is so full of levels and ideas, places to experience and explore! Generations have now seen and walked it, thought about it and been influenced by it. As a public artist whose work also faces extreme damage without funding for restoration, I feel both sympathetic and angry. The responsibility of agencies and institutions that commission ambitious public art is to maintain it, and to authorize the means to do that. Pioneering artists should not be forced to carry the burden, later in life, for their much earlier projects! I applaud the Cultural Landscape Foundation for supporting Mary and other artists who are facing such terrible decisions.
Yours,
Joyce Kozloff
< Back to the Greenwood Pond: Double Site Support Letters Page |
