Tuesday, January 21, 2014

More on Richard Serra and the Fight for Public Art

As a follow up to my post last week, the following is a letter to the editor from Serra that the Times declined to publish: 


To The Editor:
Martha Schwendener’s recent article “Shifting His Tectonic Plates” (January 10) referred to the Federal government’s destruction of my sculpture “Tilted Arc” and went on to claim, incorrectly, that “in the aftermath of that fiasco” I stopped fighting for the rights of artists creating public sculpture.  In fact, I waged a five-year battle against the misrepresentations, false promises and deceptions of the General Services Administration, and most importantly took my case to court with the aim of defending the right of artists to make work free from censorship, defacement or destruction by government agencies.  Although I lost the case, with the court allowing the government to establish a precedent for property rights over free expression, I have never stopped speaking out for the moral rights of all artists.

Richard Serra