{"id":73480,"date":"2016-08-03T14:57:43","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T20:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/arc-of-history-artist-considers-legal-action\/"},"modified":"2016-08-03T20:57:43","modified_gmt":"2016-08-03T20:57:43","slug":"arc-of-history-artist-considers-legal-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/arc-of-history-artist-considers-legal-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Arc of History artist considers legal action"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Arc of History at the intersection of U.S. Highway 550\/160 was vandalized in July 2015, just shy of a year after it was installed. The Durango Public Art Commission voted recently to remove the sculpture rather than repair it, but the artist is contesting the decision.<\/span>Steve Lewis\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Tom Holmes, creator of the Arc of History sculpture, is investigating the possibility of taking legal action against the city of Durango.<\/p>\n

Holmes, who lives in Pennsylvania, has been in contact with Jan Lokuta, an attorney in his state, and Kenneth Golden, a Durango-based lawyer, regarding the city\u2019s decision last week to remove his sculpture on the pretense of a failure to respond to a contract the Public Art Commission claims it sent to him on May 4.<\/p>\n

These attorneys are \u201cgathering documents, including the document that says I was offered $28,000 to repair that was never received,\u201d Holmes said. \u201cAfter that point, my attorneys will advise me on what\u2019s the best course of action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minutes from the June 28 meeting for the Public Art Commission state that a letter was sent on May 4 \u201coffering $28,000 for the restoration of the artwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Holmes maintains that he did not receive the offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it\u2019s purposely, maybe it\u2019s not, but it didn\u2019t show up here, and if it did this thing would already be rebuilt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Holmes said Tuesday that he has had no response from the city regarding his request for a copy of the May 4 letter despite multiple emails and phone calls over the weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s rude, it\u2019s disrespectful, it\u2019s unprofessional and it really reflects on your town poorly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The basis for the artist\u2019s potential legal action is the Visual Artist Rights Act, which states that while Holmes might lack ownership of the sculpture, he has a right to \u201cprevent any intentional distortion, mutilation or other modification\u201d of his artwork.<\/p>\n

City officials said last week they don\u2019t intend to destroy the sculpture, but according to the Public Art Master Plan, the city can relocate or store it or return it to the artist. If that fails, the city can sell it in a public auction or trade it for other works of art.<\/p>\n

While Holmes is open to all possible solutions to the issue with the Arc, he believes that it should fall to the city to repair and safely store his artwork, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s their responsibility under VARA to care for that sculpture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cristie Scott, chairwoman of the Public Art Commission, had a different opinion.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy understanding is his right would be to disassociate from the piece,\u201d Scott said.<\/p>\n

But this is dependent on the wording of the contract between the city and Holmes, which states that the city may \u201cuse, display, lend and transfer the sculpture as the city deems appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The contract goes on to say that the artist waves the right \u201cto place restrictions on the placement or display of the sculpture by the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can do with it as we see fit based on the policies created by the commission,\u201d Scott said.<\/p>\n

The larger issue, though, is the lack of response from city officials and the decision-making process behind removing the piece, Holmes said. Also questionable is officials\u2019 failure to confirm that the letter to Holmes was received through follow-up correspondence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nothing but a little political ploy to take the thing out, that\u2019s all it is,\u201d Holmes said.<\/p>\n

Scott disagreed with Holmes\u2019 assumptions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t until recently when it became clear we would not be able to replace that piece with the budget that we had from the insurance claim that we ever considered deaccessioning it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Golden, Holmes\u2019 Durango lawyer, said the city was proposing to have the sculpture fixed.<\/p>\n

He wants to find out why that didn\u2019t happen and if that option remains a possibility.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 25, 2015, the Public Art Commission decided to restore the vandalized Arc of History, but it also had a conversation about \u201creplacing the artwork with a different piece because of the controversy,\u201d according to the minutes from the meeting.<\/p>\n

The idea of replacing the artwork was raised by a member of the public attending the meeting, Scott said.<\/p>\n

Documents shows that the commission discussed the laws concerning public art and the precedent replacing a vandalized piece of artwork would set.<\/p>\n

Sherri Dugdale, assistant to the city manager, said Tuesday her office had been contacted by Holmes, but due to possible legal action, she declined to comment further.<\/p>\n

Luke Perkins is a full-time student at Fort Lewis College and an intern at The Durango Herald. He can be reached at lukep@durangoherald.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sculptor claims he never received offer to restore vandalized piece<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[246,13,2598],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-73480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-arts-general","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-sculpture"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73480"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=73480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}