MASS MoCA: Training Ground for Confidentiality
On Tuesday, August 14, 2007, MASS MoCA’s counsel, Skadden Arps, filed an emergency motion for protective order with the United States Distric Court for the District of Massachusetts seeking to prevent Christoph Büchel from disclosing and making publicly available documents used during litigation, claiming that Büchel is “abusing the discovery process” by using these documents to make and sell art. In an era of growing demand for corporate transparency and accountability, it boggles the mind that an art institution–traditionally against censorship and creative restrictions–would try to enforce the silencing of artistic voices through force of law.
MASS MoCA (“Museum”) argues that it is seeking to keep Büchel from using confidential information for artistic and commercial purposes solely because the documents contain private and confidential information such as donor bank account numbers and the names of donors who would rather remain anonymous.
However, Büchel ’s attorney, Donn Zaretzky, strongly believes this argument is false and disingenuous:
First
of all, they are not seeking to keep from public view “a
very small percentage” of the documents they produced. They
want to keep confidential ALL documents they’ve produced
(except for those that were already in Christoph’s possession
before they sued him) — every museum email regarding the
so-called “budget,” every email showing how they frittered
away the money they had allocated for the show, every email
detailing the many changes they (wilfully)[sic] made to the
unfinished work.
Second, they are not seeking only to prevent Mr Büchel from
using these materials to make future artwork (though I
note the irony of an art museum GOING TO COURT to prevent an
artist from making art). They are seeking to keep them from
public view entirely — away from the eyes of journalists
and bloggers and future art historians interested in this
dispute. Mr Büchel has never asked for a single document
relating to this dispute to be kept from public view. All he
has wanted is for all the facts to be made available to all
concerned. It’s a shame the museum does not agree.
This recent attack by MASS MoCA is reminiscent of Michael Asher’s 1999 deaccession critique of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where Asher’s discreet announcement via a shiny red catalog entitled Painting and Sculpture from The Museum of Modern Art: Catalog of Deaccessions 1929 through 1998 was made available to visitors listing all works deaccessioned by the museum during MoMA’s history. In this case, Asher was “allowed” to complete his deaccession project so long as MoMA’s logo was not on the catalog, and so long as the visitor approached the busy museum store, stand in line and request it from a cashier. Visitors recalled being told that the catalogs had run out, even though reports to the contrary stated that boxes full of catalogs were stored in MoMA’s storage space. According to MoMA’s Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Kirk Varnedoe, Asher’s listing should be considered unreliable since “we have not been able to assure ourselves that the present list meets the criteria of completeness or accuracy we would require in a museum publication.” (see Afterimage, July-August 1999). It is interesting to note that MoMA’s claim of unreliability hinges on the fact that the research for Asher’s project was relegated to a MoMA intern.
Why then would MASS MoCA be afraid to have Büchel or his attorneys disseminate court filings to the general public? Perhaps the Museum’s anxieties regarding the making public of court documents were highlighted when the Museum’s lead counsel, Kurt Hemr, copied CLANCCO on Posted in Art Law | 1 comment