Artistic Freedom and Moral Rights in Contemporary Art: The Mass MoCA Controversy

i hypothetical discussions.2 Real world cases can also reveal new areas of philosophical investiga The concept of artistic freedom, like that of acation and provide us with insight into old ones. In dernic freedom, is as potent as it is slippery. Its the Titled Arc case, sculptor Richard Serra was indeterminacy may in fact lend the concept some commissioned to make a site-specific sculpture for power, since it can be uncritically applied to many the Federal Plaza in New York as a piece of pub different kinds of situations involving artists and lie art, paid for with tax dollars. It was removed in their creations. Philosopher Paul Crowther has ob1989 after years of public outcry against the work.3 served that the prevailing conception of artistic Aside from the question of who was right, the case freedom is essentially negative in character: it is also spurred productive philosophical reflection based "purely on the absence of ideological or on the nature of public art.4 The controversy sur conceptual restraint."1 There is a widespread artrounding the Mass MoCA case offers us a similar world intuition that the creative freedom of the opportunity. It calls into question the definition artist should be given virtually absolute preceand limits of artistic freedom and the correspond dence in decisions about the creation, exhibition, ing legal concept of artistic moral rights, which are and treatment of artworks. As a recent controrelatively undeveloped areas of discussion in an versy involving Swiss artist Christoph Buchel and alytic aesthetics.5 This article attempts to expand the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art the philosophical discussion concerning the rela (Mass MoCA) shows, the dominant conception tion of artists and their works beyond the usual of artistic freedom also entails freedom from fidebates about intention and meaning, nancial and logistical constraints such as museum The role of the philosopher with respect to art budgets and exhibition deadlines. In this particuworld controversies like Tilted Arc and the Mass lar case, the artist and his supporters argued that MoCA case is not necessarily to take sides, partic the museum violated his artistic freedom by atularly when such cases hinge on legal judgments, tempting to display his unfinished and abandoned The philosopher can, however, critically examine artwork against his wishes. As with the Tilted Arc the arguments given in support of each side and controversy in the 1980s, this case raises provocadetermine whether they are coherent or confused, tive questions about the nature of artistic freedom She can also examine concepts such as "artistic as it comes into conflict with the needs and interfreedom" that are both rhetorically loaded and ests of the institutions that pay for, exhibit, and, in semantically vague in order to seek greater clarity Mass MoCA's case, construct the work. about the principles they uphold. Moreover, the While it is somewhat unusual in philosophical philosopher has the ability to suspend judgment analyses to devote so much attention to the details on the specific legal questions that arise in a given of a particular real world case, such disputes, becase so as to focus on the larger principles or cul cause of their messiness and high stakes, breathe tural values at stake in the conflict. This is what I life into what might otherwise become sterile intend to do in the present article.