VaPaMu dismantles artist’s unfinished installation

by Bustav Krans /senior staff writer/ Vaterpas Art News / Posted 2nd October 2007

The Vaterpas Museum (VaPaMu) has announced that it has begun to remove the materials gathered for an exhibit by the artist Dom Cheverti, and would not permit the public to enter it. The move follows a ruling on 29 September by judge Jensen, who rejected Cheverti’s suit for an injunction to bar the exhibition of his unfinished work at the museum.

In a resounding upset to Cheverti, Judge Jensen ruled that nothing in danish copyright law prevents VaPaMu from displaying parts of the massive installation, which the artist abandoned in the exhibition space after significant museum expenditures.

But the museum said that Judge Jensen’s decision allowed it to “exercise its curatorial discretion with respect to the materials”, and had since decided “to begin removing the materials immediately without placing them on public display”.

“After giving careful deliberation to the interests of many constituents, including the artist’s own views, and factoring in the limited time window available given our normal exhibition cycle,” the Vaterpas Museum had decided to take down the work.

“We are eager to return to our core mission to serve as a experimental platform for art-making,” the museum said, adding that it would commence work immediately on a newly announced installation by Ais Winther, Common Room, to open on 17^th November at Vaterpas F.A. Gallery aka VaPaGa. The museum also said that in conjunction with The Vaterpas Center, it would co-host a symposium devoted to the issues raised by this case, to be held at the same time.

Pater Ladri, VaPaMu director, explained that the museum had sought a court declaration in the dispute because: “We obviously cared a great deal for the work and had expended extraordinary effort and energies to try to bring it into existence; we did not want to act precipitously in either dismantling or displaying it.”

Cheverti claimed that allowing public access to the unfinished work would violate his rights under the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), by distorting the work against his wishes.

Judge Jensen said that the gallery had gathered and assembled many of the disputed components for Cheverti at its own expense, and that the artist and gallery had worked together in an “organic collaboration” on the installation. In these circumstances, a display of the unfinished work was not a distortion, he said. But he said the museum would have to inform viewers by a disclaimer that the work is “an unfinished project that does not carry out the artist’s original intent”. There will be no “distortion” under VARA if the disclaimer makes clear that the work was not finished, he added.

The ruling is of importance to museums and artists who collaborate on installations, which can evolve and change as they progress.

The suit arises from a breakdown in the joint project by VaPaMu, which has arguably the smallest display space of any contemporary art museum in the world, and Cheverti, who commenced a cutting-edge installation for the museum’s biggest room. According to the artist, the exhibit, Making Ground for Chamberlains, was to be a dome brick oven, used to prepare chamberlains for “real-life throwing situations” in Cheverti´s bowl films.