Opinion ID: 202371
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Phillips' arguments to the district court

Text: 43 Before the district court, Phillips sought to prevent Pembroke from altering, moving, or modifying any of his work in the Park in any way. At this time in the chronology of the case, the district court had not yet made its factual finding that Phillips' sculpture and stonework along the northeast-southwest axis comprised a single work of integrated art. Therefore, Phillips first argued that his sculptures and the related stonework are works of visual art designed specifically for Eastport Park and they reflect and enhance the Park's location adjacent to Boston Harbor and are inseparable from it. In other words, each of his works was site-specific, i.e., each individual piece was integrated with its location in the Park. Phillips also argued that VARA protected each of these works from any change in location because such a change would impermissibly alter them. Under this argument, all of his pieces — be it any one of his sculptures, or one of the Stone Elements — are meaningful only if they remain in Eastport Park, the location for which they were created. As Phillips elaborated: 44 if any sculptures are moved or removed, the spirit, integrity and character of [the] installations will be destroyed . . . . [because] the meaning and purpose of the art derives in large part from its physical locations. . . . [E]ven if the sculptures and stonework are rebuilt elsewhere someday, the artwork will never be the same as [I] intended it to be, and as it currently exists. 45 As a corollary to this site-specific, individual work argument, Phillips also argued that [r]emoval of [his] site-specific work would not be a permitted `presentation' or `placement of the work under the section 106A(c)(2) exception,' i.e., that Pembroke's proposed removal of some or all of his work from the Park did not fall within VARA's public presentation exception, which permits certain categories of alterations to works of art. 4 46 As alternatives, Phillips asserted two integrated work of art arguments in addition to his site-specific, individual work of art argument. First, he contended that the Park contains a sufficient number of interrelated works of visual art created by Phillips, so that any modification of any of the interrelated Parts of the Park will have an impact on the other related works, and therefore will be a violation of VARA. In other words, apart from any claim that each of the individual sculptures was site-specific, Phillips claimed that each of his individual pieces in the Park was an element of a single, larger, multi-element work of integrated art such that the removal or modification of any one of these elements in the Park would harm the larger, integrated work and violate VARA. 47 As a second integrated work of art argument, Phillips argued that while this court may not have to determine that the Park as a whole is a work of visual art protected by VARA, [i]f [keeping all of my work in the Park] means that Eastport Park must be declared to be an inviolate work of art [as a whole], then so be it. In other words, Phillips argued that, if necessary, he would assert that the Park as a whole, including the work of the other artists, was a single work of integrated art.