The lawsuit filed by artist Mary Miss in federal court in Iowa last month has gained a preliminary injunction over the alleged breach of contract stemming from the Des Moines Art Center’s planned removal of her outdoor sculpture piece Greenwood Pond: Double Site (1996). The news was shared by The Cultural Landscape Foundation last week following the announcement of her legal challenge in April. Miss had been attempting to stop museum officials from removing the piece from its grounds over maintenance concerns and said she was thankful to the court for issuing a temporary restraining order, which, she added, “opens the door to the consultations about the future of the site that were denied me.”

The 19-page ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa says the piece is, in fact, a “work of recognized stature” pursuant to the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA). Miss and her team now plan on defending its status further in order to establish a definition for her artwork that goes beyond the 1994 agreement she and the Art Center came up with originally. 

The new ruling upholds a previous restraining order issued in district court. Charles A. Birnbaum, the CEO and President of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, explains: “Though the Court stated that the Artwork ‘is not really a sculpture’ and does not fall within the definition of ‘sculpture’ under VARA, we expect that expert testimony at trial — if it gets to that point — will establish that land art is sculpture (e.g., Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty) and, especially that this land art, ‘Greenwood Pond: Doubles Site,’ was accessioned into DMAC’s permanent collection as a sculpture.”