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

Heading: The public presentation exception

Text: 82 To circumvent the district court's view of the public presentation exception, 10 Phillips argues that VARA prevents the removal of site-specific art because the public presentation exception does not apply to site-specific art. His argument begins with a claim that the words presentation and placement in the public presentation exception are ambiguous on the issue of location. We find nothing remotely ambiguous about the word presentation, which is modified by the word placement. The word placement inescapably means location. Noting this fact, Phillips claims that the word placement could suggest something that is temporary, as in the placement of furniture, or it could refer to something more permanent, as in the placement of a massive piece of sculpture. Phillips then asks the question that he describes as pivotal: does the word placement include something that is securely fixed in a particular position as in the case of. . . [his] integrated work of visual art that spans the northeast-southwest axis of the Park? 83 To answer this question, Phillips invokes the doctrine of noscitur a sociis, which counsels that words in a statute should be understood in the context of the terms around it. See Microsoft Corp. v. Comm'r, 311 F.3d 1178, 1184 (9th Cir.2002). Relying on this doctrine, Phillips asserts that  lighting and placement must be read to be related to each other and be words of equal significance. If lighting refers to non-permanent changes in public presentation, then placement must also refer to non-permanent changes in public presentation. Phillips continues: [b]uried within the placement term is the assumption that the object is moveable, and can be placed in various locations. This assumption must be examined. Site-specific artwork is a well-recognized form of art, but it is not always moveable. 84 We agree with Phillips that the premise of the public presentation exception is artwork that can be moved in some fashion, such as paintings or sculptures — that is, art that is not permanently affixed or integrated in such a way that the mere act of moving it would destroy it. The possibility of change without destruction is implicit in the public presentation exception. The public presentation exception defines the types of changes, such as those in lighting and placement, that do not constitute destruction, distortion, or mutilation. But Phillips draws a startling conclusion from the public presentation exception's focus on permissible change in the presentation of a work of visual art: because the public presentation exception addresses itself only to plop-art, that is, those works of art subject to temporary changes in such matters as lighting and placement, and declares further that such modifications of a work of visual art are not destroying, distorting, or mutilating them, the public presentation exception does not apply to site-specific art, which, as everyone acknowledges, cannot be removed from its location without destroying it. This approach leaves Phillips with the district court's holding that VARA applies to site-specific art, minus the court's related holding that the public presentation exception permits the removal of such art. In this way, the tension that we identified in the district court's decision disappears.