Opinion ID: 202371
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Pembroke's redesign of the Park and the preliminary injunction

Text: 14 In 2001, Pembroke decided to alter the Park. It retained Elizabeth Banks, a British landscape artist, to conduct the redesign. Konstantine Krekis, a member of the original design team, also contributed to the redesign. Believing that the Park's original design had conceptual problems, Pembroke wanted to simplify walkways and include more plants for better shade. Pembroke also wanted to remove much of the original stone, which had caused maintenance problems. 15 Banks' redesign plan called for the removal and relocation of Phillips' sculptures. Phillips protested. In January 2003, Pembroke agreed to retain Phillips' rough stone walls and all but one of his sculptures. The new redesign plan would also relocate some of the granite paving and change several walkways and finished granite objects. Objecting to this revised plan, Phillips filed suit in federal district court, seeking injunctive relief under VARA and MAPA. 16 On August 21, 2003, following a nonevidentiary hearing, the district court issued a temporary restraining order enjoining Pembroke from altering the Park. Subsequently, Pembroke declared its return to the original redesign plan, which would remove nearly all of Phillips' work from the Park. After a two-day evidentiary hearing, the district court issued a memorandum and order in which it found that Phillips had established the likelihood of showing: (1) that most, but not all, of his work in the Park constituted one `integrated work of visual art,' see Phillips v. Pembroke Real Estate, Inc., 288 F.Supp.2d 89, 98 (D.Mass.2003) (hereinafter  Phillips I ); (2) an artist has no right to the placement or public presentation of his sculpture under the exception in § 106A(c)(2), VARA's public presentation exception (a finding that applied to Phillips' work as both integrated art and site-specific art), id. at 100; and (3) that because the environment of Phillips' integrated sculpture along the axis of the Park is a critical element of those works, [] changing the location of the sculpture constitutes an [impermissible] alteration under MAPA, id. at 102. Therefore, according to the district court, Pembroke could move Phillips' work from the Park consistent with VARA, so long as Pembroke did not alter, modify or destroy the `works of visual art' as [the court] [had] defined them. Id. at 100. In other words, consistent with VARA, Phillips' free-standing works could be moved; and the multi-element, integrated work of art along the northeast-southwest axis could be disassembled and moved piecemeal, so long as individual pieces comprising this integrated work of art were not altered, modified, or destroyed. However, under the broader protections of MAPA for site-specific art, the court granted a preliminary injunction preventing Pembroke from altering the Park.