Connie Hungerford:	Good afternoon, everyone, good afternoon, thank you for coming on such a beautiful day. I'm Connie Hungerford, the chair of the art department, and I'm delighted to welcome you to this year's annual Lee Frank Lecture, which was endowed by the family and friends of Lee Frank, who was class of 1921. I'm thrilled that our speaker today, Deborah DeMott, is an alumna who graduated in honors with a major in history, and minors in Philosophy and English. We're grateful that she continues to affirm what Swarthmore can make possible for students, and thank her for stabilizing her research, and internship funding for students as of 2004.
	Deborah DeMott went on to earn a law degree at NYU after she graduated, and although she clerked and practiced law briefly, she's devoted her career over the last 40 years to scholarship, and research, and teaching. Duke University is her base, she is the David F. Cavers Professor of Law there, but she's also taught across the United States and internationally, for example in Australia, in New Zealand, and at the Central European University.
	Her focus started out on corporate law, and she has a page's long bibliography, but she has also taught on Art Law and is now working on a book on the material that she's going to share with us today. A fascinating area that encompasses legal issues like intellectual property, and estate planning, but also issues perhaps more peculiar to making and taking care of art. For example, the international theft of cultural heritage.
	Another issue involves what an artist does when a work of her or his creation is owned by someone who then takes liberties with it through the conditions of its display or actual changes in physical appearance. I'll say I'm personally intrigued by this topic because the late 19th century French artist on whom I work, Ernest Meissonier, once painted a portrait of a rich American woman, whose husband owned silver mines in Nevada, and she found her likeness unflattering, and although prevailed upon to pay the commission in the end, she was reported in a newspaper to have taken her revenge by hanging the portrait in her water closet, or her toilet, which then prompted an outcry from fans of the artist and very nearly a duel between his son and a journalist.
	As I say, I'm interested in this preposterous kind of issue. I know professor DeMott has even more compelling and perplexing examples to share with us, and so I invite you to join me in giving an enthusiastic welcome back as she addresses Disavowed Art.
Deborah DeMott:	Okay, thank you all so much, thank you for again coming out on a very beautiful day. I'm glad to have the opportunity to return to the college to which I owe a great deal to share something of my ongoing book project, which I very much hope is nearing completion. Overall, as Connie said, the book concerns circumstances about the ongoing relationship over time between artists and works that they make, and circumstances that sever ties of authorship, or the artists believe should sever ties of authorship between that artist and the work.
	My focus, and I know to some of you this is painfully old fashioned, but my focus is on tangible fixed works, not dematerialized ones. That could be another book. We'll look at several concrete examples that my book explores at length, concluding with this one, which I photographed about three years ago, but we will return to this.
	To be more precise, my immediate concern is works of art that a named artist in fact made and not fakes. That is to say works falsely attributed to a particular named artist. Some of the underlying concerns are related, and I address some of these in my book, but again, I focus on works that an artist, as a matter of historical fact, made which the artist now distances herself from as the artist, or would, if she but knew what had happened. Typically, this is most importantly this is when the work has been altered or modified by someone else without the artist's consent.
	Now, circumstances of specific private display are always interesting, but frankly the book for the most part doesn't go there. As well see though works of art may also be altered other than through immediate human agency, through natural forces for example, with significant implications for my topic.
	Okay, now, big point about the framing, both of the book and the lecture. I'm a lawyer, and I come to these questions as a lawyer, very much not an art historian. A big theme for me, a big part of my argument, is that sometimes the law recognizes or gives formal effect to an artist disavow, sometimes not. It's also significant that non-legal forces, or non-legal constraints, made themselves be very powerful like the threat of the duel, it's kind of an extra legal force, potentially.
	I'll examine reasons for why the law recognizes a right of disavow, known as the moral right of the artist, plus its limitations, and I hope not too many legal technicalities, but again, I am a lawyer. The moral right as we'll see has, through significant reasons for recognizing the moral right in my argument, also limitations. We'll focus on six concrete examples.
	I'll begin first with an example that always strikes me as an example of a category error. A deep misunderstanding about what was involved, and what was at stake, and what one was doing. Most likely made in good faith by the owner that triggered the artist disavow.
	This is Pittsburgh, a large mobile from 1958 by Alexander Calder. Please notice that at his white painted paddles suspended from black painted iron rods, it's suspended from the ceiling, it's intended the rods curve downward in space all intended by Calder to be seen in free and natural rotation. 
	Pittsburgh, the sculpture made from locally sourced metals, won the first prize in the 1958 Carnegie Biennial. It was purchased by a local art collector in Pittsburgh, David Thompson, and donated to Allegheny County to be displayed in the rotunda of the Pittsburgh Airport. But soon after the installation, in the assessment of a study of public sculpture in Pittsburgh in square quotes "liberties were taken." Allegheny County officials determined to repaint Pittsburgh in the County's official colors. These are green and yellow.
	The mobile therefore would match the County's fleet of vehicles like trash collection vehicles, and the emergency response vehicles. This was done without Calder's knowledge. [inaudible 00:09:01] for that matter obviously his consent. I'm holding off on the next slide. Further alterations followed, County architects determined that one section of Pittsburgh descended too low, and proposed to add counter weights so that it wouldn't hang as low. This time they notified Calder, and he was not pleased. He rejected their proposal, but the County proceeded nonetheless to add counter weights. 
	The consequence was that the mobile's balance was so disturbed, I mean, they're very [inaudible 00:09:46] as heavy as they are, but so disturbed that the mobile could no longer, shall we say, rotate or move freely. But never add a loss for a solution, the County's engineers rectified the problem through both welding, and then you can see maybe here, and adding an electric motor to turn the work 40 times an hour, automatically. Okay?
	There's more about this. Calder learned, of course was outraged, and understanding even the minimal understanding of a work of art as an extension of or embodiment of the artist's personality or identity makes it easy to see why he would be outraged. But he did agree to a compromise of sort, this concerns the paint color. He agreed to a compromise, which was to repaint Pittsburgh in a shade of red, which would have the advantage of being a color that Calder used as on Return From Rio, which the color just privileged to own, okay?
	But, sadly, sadly as applied, the paint became diluted, when applied over the green paint, leading to the somewhat pinkish quality, which again was not a color Calder used. Then the repainting project was abandoned. To the end of his long life, in 1976, Alexander Calder railed against the Allegheny County, and again, why not? Modifications made to his work altered or distanced the mobile from the work that Calder had made incorporating as it necessarily did his own intentions.
	One more thing, by 1997, as evident in this slide, a large advertising kiosk was placed beneath the mobile, its top very close to the mobile's lowest element, to be sure this placement was not an alteration made directly to the mobile, but a change in the context in which it was displayed. Perhaps I was thinking, as I was working on the lecture, its placement suggested that by that time Pittsburgh was no longer understood, at least by the County, as a work of art, as simply another object that happened to be in the interior space of the airport.
	We now turn to the law and its significance. In the United States, before 1990, visual artists like Alexander Calder had no enforceable right to prevent modifications to their work unless specifically conferred by contract. A contractual solution would be tricky here to say the least, any contract Calder could've had would've been with David Thompson, the collector, who bought the work, not Allegheny County. Complicated, and I myself think not feasible here to think of contractual solutions as contract is not a solution.
	1990 saw the enactment of a federal statute, The Visual Artists Rights Act, or VARA, which as many exceptions and limitations, one of which I will discuss later in the lecture, but yes, as a basic matter, it confers moral rights on artists as to works made after 1990. An artist's rights under VARA lasts for the artist's lifetime, not the duration of the artist's copyright interest, says in some jurisdictions, or perpetually potentially as in some jurisdictions. But the artist's lifetime, and pertain to, and here I'll have to quote the language, "Any distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the said work, which would be prejudicial to the artist's honor or reputation."
	We could say, I think, maybe Calder would say, by repainting Pittsburgh, Allegheny County distorted the work. Also, by welding it, counter-weighting it, and such. Calder surely would have argued, and I think successfully, before a court that these were prejudicial to his honor, or disrespected him and his work. VARA would have protected Calder's right to prevent the painting, or the repainting of the work.
	Were Pittsburgh repainted without his consent, Calder under the statute would have the right to disavow it, would have the right to, an enforceable right, to have his name expunged as the author of the repainted work. 
	VARA aside for a moment, the misadventures of Pittsburgh illustrate another numbered sequence, three basic points. First, it's a mistake to assume, I argue, as some legal scholarship does, that enlightened self-interest on the part of owners will function as a safeguard against detrimental alterations to works of art. Sometimes an owner may suffer from hubris, from an all too sure conviction in the correctness of present preferences, for example, that the work be green and yellow rather than red, with very regrettable consequences.
	Second, it's also a mistake to assume that all owners match a particular prototype that is of an individual art collector like David Thompson. Many owners are complex institutions, some are good stewards of the art that they own, exemplified, I would, by this college's restoration [inaudible 00:16:21], the Stabile, and the repainting of the Stabile mobile back from Rio. But not all institutions live up to this aspiration, including Allegheny County in shit respect.
	Third, Allegheny County's alterations to Pittsburgh not only contravened Alexander Calder's intentions, they misrepresented the work to those who saw it. From one thing, viewers who had heard of Alexander Calder seeing this might wonder why he was so famous.
	Even if we acknowledge, as certainly I would as a lawyer, that most artists make works that build on what's come before, alterations like Allegheny County's deny viewers access to the work that Calder in fact made, discarding the interest of the audience in knowing what they're looking at, hear the historic fact of what a particular artist made.
	But now my story takes a happier turn, which I hope we're glad to hear. A local newspaper, remember when we had those local newspapers? Published a letter to the editor written by a tired Pittsburgh business person, a man, tired Pittsburgh business traveler, recounting his return home through the Pittsburgh airport in a foul mood one Friday evening, my assumption has always been that perhaps the business trip had not gone so well after all to see this. Only to see that the mobile's already sorry condition had been made even worse by the addition of the advertising kiosk.
	In roughly the same era, which would be the mid 70s', civic leaders in Pittsburgh became committed to redefining the city, to defining a new identity for the city, reshaping its image, for example, they sponsored a large downtown festival, a public sculpture in 1997. And I'm pleased to say to an academic audience like you, a graduate student on art history took on the airport mobile as a seminar project, wrote a fine paper, wrote popular articles from a project in academic research has became for her a project in advocacy all together leading to funding, to place the mobile in the safe hands of the Carnegie Museum, which had it properly restored.
	Once restored, it was reinstalled with some celebration in the new Pittsburgh airport, and continues to be celebrated by the airport in the guide that it now publishes to art in the airport, which is quite, we might say here, a transformation.
	Notice that, although the law, where was the law? The law did not compelled this outcome, right? Other forces did, [inaudible 00:19:44] public opinion, maybe attention, that came to dominate the county's decisions as the mobile's owner.
	I now turn to a more, I would say, notorious incident, at least in my field, that still casts a long shadow, we might say more than one way, over debates about moral rights in the United States, but also, in my argument, illustrates the potential power of non-legal forces and constraints.
	This may be familiar to some of you. Okay. Characterized by the art historian Jennifer Mundy as a wall of steel, the wall of steel, this is Tilted Arc from Richard Serra. It was a large sculpture installed in 1981 in a plaza adjacent to a federal office complex in downtown Manhattan. It was fabricated of COR-TEN steel, it was 120 feet long, and 10 feet high. It, you could see here form the aerial photo, bisected the plaza and in Richard Serra's account was intended to restructure the organization of the space both conceptually and perceptually.
	Tilted Arc was commissioned by the Federal General Services Administration, or the GSA, under the terms of the Art and Architecture Program, Art-in-Architecture program for living artists. For Richard Serra it represented a one time opportunity to join a very distinguished list, which by that time included Alexander Calder.
	But, four years later, four years after the installation, in 1985, registering the discontent of occupants of the building, and users of the plaza, the GSA determined to remove and relocate Tilted Arc. Richard Serra sued but lost. The contract through which the GSA commissioned Tilted Arc, commissioned the sculpture, make it the owner and did not require that the sculpture be displayed in a location for which the sculptor intended it. Serra's argument was it was a site specific sculpture, but that by contract then was not a limitation to which the GSA was subject.
	Most scholarship on Tilted Arc then tends to emphasize the absence of the law, for example VARA, then the ultimate significance of the enactment of the statute. But I have a somewhat different story to tell. When I was in researching this incident, again, I discovered that the formal legal analysis that dominates scholarly accounts was not the sole factor at work in the overall history of Tilter Arc.
	In advance of the formal hearing that preceded the GSA's determination and as a steward of government property, the GSA's regional administrator contacted potential purchases for the sculpture once it was removed. One was the Storm King Art Center, a celebrated open art sculpture park in Mountain View, New York, founded in 1960 as a site for works of sculpture too large for that era's museum. 
	When Storm King's president learned of Richard Serra's opposition to moving Tilter Arc form the site, he withdrew from negotiations with the GSA. His letter, officially a government document, because sent it to the GSA so available to researchers, his letter on behalf of Storm King stated that although it had what he termed a magnificent location for Tilted Arc "We would not wish to install any work of art against the wishes of its creator, we would accept the piece only with the artist's consent." 
	Just to show a little different image, here's a work by Richard Serra that one can see now at Storm King, this is a 1991 work, Schunnemunk Fork, Schunnemunk Mountain is in the background, formally, it's got some formal similarities to Tilted Arc, but the steel slabs here emerge from the earth, and overall the natural landscape dominates.
	I continue, I go back to the argument. The law did not compel Storm King's decision concerning Tilted Arc. It was legally free to buy what the GSA was free to sell, but Storm King, which now formerly characterizes itself as an art museum, operated subject to constraints apart from and beyond the law. However much its president admired Tilted Arc as a work of art, as an object to buy and install it over the artist's opposition would [inaudible 00:25:27] the point of Storm King itself, I think. Its identity as an art museum necessarily commits to the view that its collection is not merely an assembly of objects, but a collection of artworks meaningfully connected to the intentions of the artists who made them. He acted consistently with it.
	But I am a lawyer and I turn now to the fact of the law relevant to artist's moral rights differs across countries. To tie this to what we've already seen, recall that in addition to repainting Calder's Pittsburgh, Allegheny County situated a large advertising kiosk underneath it. In recall VARA's language as to works made after 1990, the language refers to a distortion, mutilation or modification of the said work forwards, of the said work, distortion, mutilation, and modification that would be detrimental to the artist's honor or reputation.
	To see the importance of smallish matters of language, maybe [inaudible 00:26:44] you might think a lawyer could love. Consider this next work. Okay, this is Licht-Arcade, or Light Arcade, designed and installed by the Dutch artist Peter Struycken in 1993. Peter Struycken was commissioned by the Dutch Institute of Architects to create a light sculpture for the arcade of its building in the heart of Rotterdam. We see Licht-Arcade, or the Light Arcade, here from the street, and here's an interior view.
	The arcade, which forms one point of entrance into the building is a curved gallery with 40 concrete columns. Struycken's work consists of a series of illuminated patterns and colors generated by 80 light boxes containing colored lamps controlled by a computer program designed by the artist to create a pattern on the columns displayed at night and continually changing.
	The point is, I would say, illuminating the entire gallery in a dynamic sculpture indeed made of light, or composed of light. But this a lawyer story, right? So there's always going to be something happen. Three years later at 1996 the institute arranged for the temporary display of large painted sheets executed by artists other than Peter Struycken and suspended from the pillars.
	The display destroyed Light Arcade's changing patterns of light, which could no longer be reflected on the pillars. Struycken sued under the Dutch law of moral rights, this is in Rotterdam, and it's in the Netherlands, and it's Dutch law. In the United States though, under VARA, his claims I think would be difficult ones, we might argue that by permitting display of the painted sheets, the institute distorted or modified Peter Struycken's work. But remember I said that VARA had exceptions and limitations.
	We would have to also deal with the fact that VARA excludes modifications due to "lighting," unless caused by gross negligence, which I think would be a tough argument here. How would we distinguish between light effects that are constitutive of a work itself, and lighting that enables the work to be seen. This would be tough, I would love to write the brief. But this could be a tough argument. Much would turn on defining two words in VARA, the work, what is the work? Or for that matter was lighting in the word of exclusion. 
	Additionally, think back, should the definition of the work be so broad that it includes elements like the advertising kiosk placed underneath Pittsburgh that distracted viewers, but in fact did not make contact with the work in any meaningful sense. But Dutch law is different, okay? Struycken, Peter Struycken, and his lawyers relied on article 25 of the Dutch Copyright Act, this is very old, of 1912. Under which an artist has the right to object to, and this kind of sounds like the American statute, any distortion, mutilation or other modification of the work. There's seven more words in the Dutch statute.
	Modification of and, the additional words are, other derogatory action in relation to the work. This is not to the work, but in relation to the work. Only seven words, but they made Struycken's case an easy one for the court because the words encompass actions that alter a work through means other than physical modifications to the work itself. Almost, I was thinking as I was writing this, as if the Dutch legislators in 1912 foresaw light sculptures. Perhaps they simply had a broader drafting style, I don't know.
	I turn now to a different, otherwise in which a work of art may be modified contrary to its author's intentions. All of my examples so far could be characterized as agentic, that is stemming from the wield and the deliberate action of persons, including institutions, other than the artist. But non-agentic alterations are possible as well, are alterations due to non-agentic forces.
	My example for this, and questions this might raise, [inaudible 00:32:06] this work. This painting. This is, perhaps already you've seen this image or an image of this painting, this is Hieratic Suprematist Cross painted by the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich in 1920-1921. This is a famous painting in the supremacist style, there's a lot of books as an example of Suprematism. The background, this stark white background, a black bar crossing a somewhat wider red vertical. Say that the painting exemplifies Malevich's commitment to an art reduced, severely reduced, to geometric forms and relationships among them.
	As he wrote in his manifesto Suprematism, he sought to free art from the ballast of objectivity, we know he took refuge in the square, in the black square, in 1913 sought and also sought an art of directly expressed feeling. When we produced, as it often is, our Hieratic Suprematist Cross, I think likely it looks much as Malevich intended in 1920, it's an expression in stark form and invites a reflex religious or spiritual feeling.
	We might say in some ways the persona of the artist, the presence of the artist hand, is severely reduced, or severely not a factor in what we're invited to look at. But, the painting itself as an object has visibly departed from the stylistic precepts of the manifesto. When I first saw the painting itself in 2003, it had traveled to the United States for a temporary exhibit, which itself was legally fraught for reasons way beyond the scope of this lecture. 
	What I saw departed from the familiar reproductions, looked at for itself, and not just at the source of an iconic image, the painting has noticeable, and notable I think, pentimenti. We're focused on this part of the painting, okay, and I hope that's showing up pretty well. Okay. Over time, as I know many of you know, paint changes, it becomes more transparent, with the consequence that earlier and rejected elements of a composition may become visible, almost like the visual echoes of an earlier design, or perhaps of an artist's use of an earlier painting as the material support for a new one.
	Here pentimenti visible to the naked eye if one looks at the painting itself. In the once stark white field, they appear to form a diagonal strip running at a 45 degree angle downward from the black horizontal [inaudible 00:35:20] plus blackish and reddish strips like ends of ribbons all complicating the design, but these emerging shapes also they're softer, they're hesitant, they're less decisive feeling than the cross itself, but give the entire painting, at least to me anyhow, a painterly look through visible brush strokes, it's a different painting than one might expect based on Malevich's manifesto.
	By reflecting the consequences of time's operation on the materials the artist chose to use, the painting now seems to depart from the artist's intention. When I got back to Durham from being New York City where I had the opportunity to see this exhibit of Malevich, I told my research assistant at the time what I'd seen and she was visibly depressed, visibly upset, she'd written a thesis on Malevich and the manifesto. Then to be told [inaudible 00:36:29] the painting itself, the present object itself, is betraying the artist's intention as elaborated in the manifesto she found very disturbing and I think, in a way, rightfully so.
	But we might ask should the paintings owner, which is the wonderful museum, the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, should it now intervene and reverse the modifications returning the painting to the precepts of the manifesto by painting out the pentimenti? But this would betray the history of the work itself. Which remains, I think, a painting worthy of admiration, although it reflects the impact of time, and reveals the artist's, otherwise hidden, choices and processes. And also say that, Dutch law aside, the Stedelijk operates subject to well understood norms that constrain museums, that museums impose on themselves like the Storm King, which we've already met, including when museums make decisions about conservation.
	As for Storm King, which declined to purchase a sculpture, the owner was legally free to sell. The Stedelijk exercises formal discretion, it certainly has formal discretion over conservation of objects that it owns, but subject to constraints that define its identity as an art museum and that regulate the conduct of the professionals who work in the museum, or work on behalf of the museum. 
	To be sure these norms have evolved over time, but there's significant limits on what appropriately may be done in the name of conservation, in any event this is another point in my book, which we can deal with also in the next example, but I don't really have time in the lecture to give this its full due.
	Notice that appealing to an artist's intentions to resolve issues about a work can be highly conjectural. Not conjectural at all when the artist is a what mentally competent living individual like Alexander Calder or Richard Serra, but very difficult, and very conjectural for an artist, at this point, you know, like Malevich. Moving on, we sometimes need to think about the fact that artists intentions with regard to their work change over time.
	I turn now to the implications of the well-known fact, to the artists themselves, are often the agents of modifications for works that they've made. Most extremely so when they destroy them. Alterations like destructions may fall from being a good artist, from rigorously assessing works one's made, and for some of them deciding that they should no longer continue to exist, with the consequence that for some artists like for example the painter Anges Martin, who's currently exhibited a lot.
	[inaudible 00:39:46] small bodies of work, because vigorously throughout their lifetime they've called and destroyed substandard works before they leave the studio. Also, their aesthetic has remained relatively constant over time. But the self-narrative of some artists changes over time, and the artist's aesthetic criteria and sense of self shift over time also, and sometimes, given the opportunity, this can lead to modifications that the artist no longer owns.
	My example for today is this large drawing on paper by the Belgian artist James Ensor, this is the Temptation of Saint Anthony from 1877. Now in the permanent collection of The Art Institute in Chicago. For reasons that I have not been able to find answers to, for reasons I've not been able to locate in the record, the collector, the [inaudible 00:40:58] self-denying collector who purchased The Temptation of Saint Anthony agreed that Ensor could retain possession of it throughout his life.
	Okay. As a young man and a young artist, as the person he then was, Ensor was a social and political rebel, a lot of his art expressed in visual form very harsh critiques of Belgian society, and the catholic church. He was blessed with a long life. Perhaps anticipating the 1929 retrospective exhibit of his work to The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Ensor applied paper patches here and there across the lower half of the 1877 drawing. Particularly over portions that were overtly anti-clerical, scatological, sexual, difficult. But it was a very large piece on paper, many, many separate sheets.
	But the lower half would've been the most visible portion of the drawing to the audience, including to the king, who attended the 1929 retrospective on which Ensor's chances of being appointed account turned. Some of the patches he applied were blank, others featured anodyne images, my favorite is this guy, his dog, who I've read was a pug. Then, this is visitors who saw the work then in the retrospective exhibition, would have seen a kind of peculiar looking work, you know, kind of literally patchy. 
	Some visitors might think "Gee, just as it's getting interesting. There's that dog again." Or a blank, or some other very uncontroversial image. The Temptation of Saint Anthony entered the collection of the Art Institute in 2006. As a very large scale work on paper, it posed, we'll just say here, many conservation challenges. Most intriguing, at least to me, was whether to remove the patches. That is to say to conserve or return the work as much as possible to the vision of a young, rebellious, and difficult artist as he was in 1887, or to retain the patches in place thereby revealing the older artist's intent as he himself defined himself differently. Or perhaps the images could be displayed side-by-side, but it's a very large work to display regardless.
	The museum decided to conserve the work consistent with the intentions of the young Ensor. In part I think because, from my own reading of the treatment of human art history, it's for his earlier rebellious for which he's most celebrated, or most famous. But they did preserve the patches, but they're not on display.
	One could say also just as Malevich's Hieratic Suprematist Cross, his visual coherence, albeit showing the effects of age, the 1887 version of Temptation of Saint Anthony is powerful, and the museum's decision is consistent with the artist's intentions, although those of the young artist succeeded by a much older and maybe wiser self, certainly more cautious self.
	I conclude with an example, finally, that illustrates the hazards sometimes irreversible, sadly, to art when it becomes incorporated in the fabrics of everyday life. Plus the limits of the law, and other constraining forces. The image with which my lecture began came from the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, and from the garden, that's an integral part of the museum and integral to the museum's display practices with regard to work of art.
	At the end of the garden path was a work by James Turrell, Tending, (Blue), from 2003. It was a sky space, it was physically an enclosure constructive of granite and limestone lit by a circular opening in the roof. I would say myself it was an artwork effective in many ways through subtraction, I mean, it wonderfully removed visual distraction through subtraction, it focused one's attention on what was there to be seen, and their beautiful skies in [inaudible 00:46:18] Texas, with birds, and airplanes, and clouds, sometimes suddenly appearing and then moving in space.
	Soon after the museum opened, Tending, (Blue) was one of the most celebrated and widely enjoyed works in the museum's collection. But then, and again, this is a lawyer story, right? We know it won't stay good for long, right? But then, literally across the street, a private developer constructed a very tall high-end condominium building, with a highly reflective glass skin. I was told on the site visit I made, this was in like a relatively cloudy day, it was in March in Dallas, but still looks pretty reflective, it could imagine what that is like in a more typically very sunny day in Dallas. Called Museum Tower.
	The point, or the commercial point of the project was to appeal to supporters of the Nasher, the Dallas Museum of the Fine Arts, which is on the other side of the Nasher, and other nearby cultural institutions. The height and the reflective surface of Museum Tower interfered in a dramatic fashion on Tending, (Blue), or intervened to, I would say, in a dramatic fashion on Tending, (Blue).
	Not, of course, literally into the physical materials from which the structure of the work was constructed, but through a drastic interference with the experience that James Turrell structured for the viewer. Tending, (Blue) in Turrell's assessment was no longer the work he made. To be sure, obviously the work intentionally incorporated its environment, what could be seen through the aperture. It's true, and I myself, personally, physically did, position oneself in the sky space, which is beyond the door, so that the view is not dominated by Museum Tower. 
	But then of course drastically reduces the number of people who could be in the sky space at the same time, and of course it's a very different experience, there's no way, at least in my experience, to be in Tending, (Blue) and not have at least some sense of the impact of Museum Tower leaving aside the sense that it's [inaudible 00:49:08], right? Which you can't do much about. 
	But by the terms of the commission contract, Turrell disavowed the work by deeming it destroyed leading the museum to close it. This is my photo of the green lock mechanism on the doors. The Nasher Sculpture Center and the owners of Museum Tower were unable to agree on a solution. Perhaps, in part, because Museum Tower, are we surprised? Was slow to find a market for expensive condo units once the building's destructive impact became evident and notorious.
	It is possible to reduce reflectivity on glass skins, this has been done with other buildings, but it is very expensive, and again, those condos just were not selling at the price for which the project had been budgeted.
	The damage, in other words, appears to be irreversible, unlike for example the modifications made to Calder's Pittsburgh. The laws' answers here are far from clear. Did Museum Tower, shifting for a moment here to another body of law, which I haven't mentioned yet in the lecture. Under Texas law, did Museum Tower constituted nuisance? Under Texas property law, or tort law. Did the alterations to what viewer saw through Tending, (Blue)'s aperture violate James Turrell's moral rights under VARA?
	As a lawyer, I should, I guess, on the [inaudible 00:51:00] that I could argue it both ways, but certainly the legal answers are far from clear, and far from definitive. But I conclude with a larger point. Law is always limited, especially when applied to problems like the ones explored in this lecture. Explaining how disputes are resolved, and the fate of works of art always requires I think looking more broadly, looking to non-legal norms, public opinion, and much else. All of it interdependent with the law, and in a sense we could say the law interdependent with it as well.
	[inaudible 00:51:42] differently art, like all of us, needs its friends and it needs its allies. Thank you very much and questions? Thank you.