Settlement Reached in Lawsuit Between Artist Mary Miss and the Des Moines Art Center over Greenwood Pond: Double Site

Media Contact: Nord Wennerstrom | T: 202.483.0553  | M: 202.255.7076 | E: nord@tclf.org

The Cultural Landscape Foundation is creating a Public Art Advocacy Fund to bring national attention to land-based works that are threatened and at-risk – Miss is the inaugural donor to the fund

January 14, 2025 (Washington, D.C.) – The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), a Washington, D.C.-based education and advocacy non-profit, today announced that the artist Mary Miss and the Des Moines Art Center have reached a settlement concerning a breach of contract lawsuit by Miss against the Art Center about the environmental sculpture Greenwood Pond: Double Site, which was commissioned for the Art Center’s permanent collection and opened in 1996. The Art Center will pay the artist $900,000; the settlement will end the lawsuit filed by Miss on April 4, 2024, for breach of contract, and allow the Des Moines Art Center to proceed with previously stated plans to destroy the artwork. The Art Center never engaged in serious negotiations with the artist about a fundraising effort to restore the work; instead, the Art Center’s director informed the artist in a December 1, 2023, email: “we do not and will not ever have the money to remake it.” At that point the artist contacted TCLF, which mounted an advocacy campaign that included: public outreach and education; more than 50 letters of support from art world leaders including collectors, philanthropists, artists, curators, former museum directors, and others; webinars about women and the land art movement; short videos with the artist; strategic communications; pro bono legal counsel; and other actions.

In tandem with the settlement, TCLF, which has advocated on behalf of Greenwood Pond: Double Site since 2014 (along with many other examples of art in the public realm), announced the creation of the Public Art Advocacy Fund to provide a national platform for threatened and at risk works. The artist Mary Miss has agreed to be the inaugural donor to the fund.

Of the settlement concerning Greenwood Pond: Double Site, Mary Miss stated:

I am so appreciative of the broad support that has brought us to this final settlement: to the artists, designers, patrons and others who have followed the issues surrounding the future of Greenwood Pond: Double Site, I give my heartfelt thanks. I hope the resurrection and reconsideration of this project will lead to further reflections on the relationships between artists, environmental issues, communities and our public cultural institutions. I trust this experience can help to develop stronger bonds moving forward.

The support of the citizens of Des Moines has been one of the most important aspects of this past year. I was made aware of decades of experiences at Double Site that were truly moving.  I am especially indebted to the Wandro Law Firm for their representation in all the legal matters as well as the advice and support of the Iowa Lawyers for the Arts. Their guidance has been invaluable.

Most particularly I would like to acknowledge the support of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, which has been advocating for this project since 2014. Without their leadership and ability to bring national attention to this matter, it would have been very difficult to surface this sculpture's future for broad public inquiry. Therefore, I am pleased to provide the inaugural donation to TCLF’s Public Art Advisory Fund.

TCLF President & CEO, Charles A. Birnbaum said:

Site-specific works of art in the landscape, when starved of the necessary curatorial oversight and stewardship, like great works of landscape architecture, are among the most vulnerable and least forgiving representations of our shared cultural identity. With many of these works now reaching sufficient age, and the artist’s careers drawing to a close, a strategy for their long-term stewardship and protection has accelerated the need for a comprehensive national education and advocacy strategy, hence the creation of the Public Art Advocacy Fund. What happened to Greenwood Pond: Double Site could have and should have been prevented, but the institution that commissioned the environmental sculpture for its permanent collection appears to have failed as a proper custodian and steward of this widely acclaimed and influential artwork, which is a core function and responsibility.

Sadly, over roughly the past decade we have seen an increase in the number of threatened artworks. Now with the impending loss of Greenwood Pond: Double Site, something needed to change. The Public Art Advocacy Fund will enable TCLF to draw meaningful and lasting attention to the significance of art in the landscape, support the generation of local and national historic designations, as well as highlight, nurture and amplify local and national constituencies for at risk works, and to develop and execute targeted advocacy campaigns.

We are honored that Mary Miss has agreed to be the inaugural donor to the Public Art Advocacy Fund.

Within the broad umbrella of cultural landscapes, TCLF has brought attention to and advocated for other specific categories, such as Modernist landscapes, as well as bodies of work by specific landscape architects including Garrett Eckbo, M. Paul Friedberg, Lawrence Halprin, and Cornelia Hahn Oberlander.

About TCLF’s Advocacy for Art in the Public Realm 
TCLF’s efforts in the area of art in the landscape includes intervention and advocacy that saved the following: Russell Page’s East 70th Street viewing garden at the Frick Collection in New York, N.Y.; Athena Tacha’s Green Acres in Trenton, N.J.; Elyn Zimmerman’s Marabar at the National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. that was relocated and reimagined by the artist and installed as Sudama on the American University campus; Isamu Noguchi’s Red Cube at 140 Broadway in New York, N.Y.; Herbert Bayer’s Mill Creek Canyon Earthworks in Kent, WA: Noah Purifoy’s Outdoor Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Sculpture in Joshua Tree, CA; Sabato Rodia’s Watts Tower in Los Angeles, CA; and others. In addition, TCLF’s advocacy has helped secure the future of Harvey Fite’s Opus 40 in Saugerties, N.Y., and to get Robert Morris’ Untitled Earthwork (Johnson Pit No. 30), in SeaTac, WA, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the first earthwork so designated.

The pioneering work by Mary Miss was initially included in the 2014 Landslide report and digital exhibition dedicated to Art and the Landscape, as part of TCLF’s annual Landslide initiative focused on threatened cultural landscapes.

In addition to these site-specific works and installations, TCLF’s advocacy in this arena has also included sculpture gardens and collections including outsider artist Allan Reiver’s Elizabeth Street Garden in New York, N.Y., and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, TX. Most recently, TCLF has begun to bring attention to Pearlstone Park in Baltimore, MD, and other site-specific installations by the artist Scott Burton (1939-1989), who is currently the subject of a retrospective at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, MO.  

About Mary Miss
The internationally renowned New York-based artist Mary Miss created her first temporary site-specific installations in the 1960s, later producing permanent works such as Greenwood Pond: Double Site. Her works are interdisciplinary, often informed by the history and ecology of their settings, and include elements of architecture, sculpture, landscape architecture, and installation art. In 2009 Miss launched the City as Living Laboratory (CALL) an initiative that encourages artists to collaborate with scientists, planners, and other experts to create place-based artworks that engage the public with the environment and issues of sustainability.

Miss has received numerous awards and honors and her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art (both in New York City); Harvard University (Cambridge, MA); and the Tate Modern (London, UK). The artist was featured in the widely hailed 2023-24 Nasher Sculpture Center exhibition Groundswell: Women of Land Art. A complete biography is available on the artist’s website.

About Greenwood Pond: Double Site
“Greenwood Pond: Double Site is the first urban wetland project in the State of Iowa and also the first in the nation. It moves away from the notion of sculpture as ‘object’ and toward art understood and realized through its relationship with nature and outdoor space,” according to Jessica Rowe, former director of the Greater Des Moines Public Art Foundation, in the book An Uncommon Vision.

Max Anderson, former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Dallas Museum of Art, and three other museums, has said Greenwood Pond: Double Site “enjoys an importance and a prominence in public art second to none in this country.”

The installation features a multi-level gravel and boardwalk path system that curves along the edge of the pond, which is planted with wetland grasses, allowing visitors to explore the natural surroundings. To the south, a ramp diverges from the path to bring visitors down to the level of the pond before disappearing into the water. On the north side, another path also breaks away to enter the pond, where it transitions to a concrete-lined trough that allows visitors to descend until they are at eye level with the water’s surface. A series of structures throughout the site provide areas for gathering – these include a large, covered pavilion, a seating area, an arched wooden trellis, a small bridge pavilion, and a stepped stone terrace.

According to an October 19, 1996, Des Moines Register article, Miss was “one of several internationally known environmental artists who came to Des Moines in the late 1980s at the invitation of then-Des Moines Art Center Director Julia Brown Turrell to consider creating at site-specific work of art at a place of the artist’s choosing in Greenwood Park.” The museum selected Miss, Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, and later Andy Goldsworthy, to develop works for the museum grounds in Greenwood Park, a 147-acre Picturesque park laid out by the Des Moines Parks Board in 1894, and the museum’s home since 1948.

Miss described her intent with the Des Moines commission: “Rather than place a sculpture as an object in the landscape, how could a work take the site, its history, ecology, social nature into consideration?  And how could a museum begin to operate outside its walls, find new ways of involving people with art who might never step inside a museum?  These were issues that were important to the museum at this time.” Of the Greenwood Pond location, she noted: “I was particularly taken with the idea of how this silt filled pond that was a socially problematic area for the community could be transformed into a demonstration wetland that would be a destination.”

The project was supported by the Des Moines Art Center with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, Melva and Martin Bucksbaum, Carolyn and Matthew Bucksbaum, City of Des Moines, Des Moines Founders Garden Club, Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck Architecture, George Milligan Memorial, Judy Milligan McCarthy, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, Norwest Banks N.A, Louise Noun, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Science Center of Iowa, and McAninch Corporation. It also received the 1994 Garden Club of America Founders Fund Medal.

About The Cultural Landscape Foundation
The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), is a 501(c)(3) non-profit founded in 1998 to connect people to places. TCLF educates and engages the public to make our shared landscape heritage more visible, identify its value, and empower its stewards. Through its website, publishing, lectures, and other events, TCLF broadens support and understanding for cultural landscapes.  TCLF is also home to the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize.
 

EDITORS: Hi-res images can be downloaded here – caption and credit information are in each photo label.

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