American land artist and designer Mary Mays was traveling in Europe in October when she received the kind of news no one in her field wants to hear. One of her most important works of art, owned by a museum in Iowa, will have to be closed to the public because it has fallen into disrepair and parts of it were in danger of collapsing.
Six weeks later, she heard from the Des Moines Arts Center that her entire environmental installation would be dismantled. Word came from the arts center’s new director, Kelly Baum, who said fixing the project would cost $2.7 million, leaving the museum no choice.
Created between 1989 and 1996, “Greenwood Pond: Double Site” is one of very few environmental installations in the collection of any American museum and is considered the first urban wetlands project in the country. Its impending demolition has angered landscape architecture advocates and upset Ms., who is part of a generation of pioneering female land artists receiving renewed academic attention.
“The things that became so important in my later work — engaging communities, collaborating with scientists, being able to address something like climate change as an artist and having a seat at the table with politicians and educators — started there.” The 79-year-old said by phone from her home in Manhattan. With its boardwalk and concrete walkways that curve along the water’s edge and its cantilever bridges, “Greenwood Pond: Double Site” invites passersby to explore the landscape; Viewers can climb a tower to see the water from above or descend into a sunken structure to experience it at eye level.
The debate over the fate of the work has highlighted the difficulty of preserving public artworks, especially in environments with increasingly harsh weather. Over the past 15 years, a wave of ambitious outdoor projects commissioned in the 1980s and 1990s have required extensive maintenance or repair, according to Lee Arnold, associate curator of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, which included Ms. in the popular recent exhibition. “Groundswell: Women of Land Art” exhibition. The case of “Greenwood Pond: Dual Site” “It’s a symptom of this larger issue with site-specific facilities, where there’s this sort of ‘set it and forget it’ attitude,” Arnold said.
In the late 1980s when artists were rethinking what sculpture could look like outside the white cube gallery space, the Des Moines Arts Center invited Mays, along with sculptors Richard Serra and Bruce Nauman, to develop site-specific works for the city. Owned garden Where the museum is located. Miss chose a deserted pond. Over the course of seven years, she worked with indigenous communities, a botanist from Iowa State University, and other groups to restore the area to its original wetland state. In its contract with the Miss, in 1994, under former director Michael Danoff, the museum pledged to “reasonably protect and preserve the project against the ravages of time, vandalism and the elements.”
“Greenwood Pond: a dual site,” the museum says. It has been “continuously maintained” since its opening. In consultation with the artist, the museum completed extensive repairs in 2014 and 2015, according to Amy Day, the museum’s director of external affairs. But residential roof lumber, which has a lifespan of about a decade, was no match for Iowa’s harsh climate.
“We fully understand the desire to re-engineer and rebuild the business,” Day said. “However, the Arts Center does not have these resources.”
Ms. noted that an outdoor project she made with the same materials in St. Louis has gradually improved over time, just as floorboards on a porch can be replaced and still be in good condition. It led efforts to repair one of its other facilities in South Cove, a public park in Battery Park City, in 2019.
Much of Miss’s work focuses on making city dwellers more aware of their surroundings and their connection to the natural world. For South Cove, Ms., along with landscape architect Susan Child and architect Stanton Eckstut, transformed a concrete platform atop a landfill into a wild seashore framed by subtle architectural interventions. Writing for the New York Times In 1990, Tony Hess likened South Cove to New York fixtures such as Central Park and Carnegie Hall for its ability to “expand our understanding of our relationships to each other and to the world the city serves.” In 2008, Ms. founded City as Living Laboratory, a non-profit organization that brings together artists, scientists, and urban residents to address issues of sustainability.
“It is ironic that other examples of Mary’s truly ambitious public art projects are not in the collections of art museums, yet they are cared for in a way that ensures they continue to be part of the public landscape,” Arnold, the museum’s publisher and curator, said.
The museum said its agreement with the city of Des Moines “to remediate and/or remove any unsafe conditions related to the artwork in Greenwood Park” takes precedence over its agreement with the artist. Des Moines Parks and Recreation Director Ben Page said the city has not called for the work to be removed but supports the museum’s decision.
Charles Birnbaum, director of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, an education and advocacy group, said the handling of Ms.’s installation is emblematic of the art world’s tendency to devalue environmental art. The organization helped rally support for “Greenwood Pond: Double Site” in 2014 and is leading opposition to its destruction. “Landscape architecture is treated like a second or third class citizen,” Birnbaum said. “Sometimes it comes from a lack of institutional memory — a loss of cultural memory of what they had.”
Ms. said she was “shocked” by the museum’s estimate that saving “Greenwood Pond: The Dual Site” would cost $2.7 million. She wondered whether the work could be repaired in stages, rather than all at once, using less expensive wood that could be replaced in the future at more regular intervals.
Birnbaum suggested that the museum consult the Des Moines Founders Garden Club or other sponsors who might have an interest in funding the preservation of the work. (The museum’s director, Baum, told the Miss she had “many conversations” with trustees, the city and individuals who helped fund the work’s rehabilitation in 2014.) In a letter sent to Miss on January 17, the museum’s board of directors wrote that the method that called for replacing materials was “not financially feasible and does not involve reasonable maintenance.” The museum’s operating budget in 2023 was $7.7 million.
For Miss, the decision seems particularly ironic given her prominent place in recent exhibitions that have reconsidered women whose contributions have been downplayed by mainstream art history. Her work has been included in 52 Artists: A Feminist Landmark, a re-presentation of a 1971 exhibition organized by critic Lucy Lippard at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Connecticut, as well as the Groundswell exhibition at Nasher. “Does this confession start happening again and then get erased again – again? Really?” Miss said. “It’s really difficult.”