I'm a little behind the times, but Sergio Muñoz-Sarmiento has posted the news that MASS MoCA has lost in its effort to keep materials it provided during the discovery process of the lawsuit its involved in with Christoph Büchel. When I first heard of the museum's efforts, I had two thoughts: one, that it seemed to me that it would not be too difficult to keep confidential the documents or information that one could reasonably see that the museum had a compelling reason to keep confidential (the names of anonymous donors, for instance), and two, that whether or not the rest should be public would depend in part on whether MASS MoCA had a reasonable expectation of confidentiality for items produced under the circumstances. It looks like the judge agreed with the first and thought the answer to the second was "not so much."
I'm glad that the institution was able to keep some limited information quiet, presuming it does apply to things like anonymous donor identities--while there may not be a legal reason to require that sort of information be under wraps, the promises museums make to donors under those circumstances are an important part of how gifts happen and thereby benefit the public. On the other hand, one can easily understand why MASS MoCA wanted to keep everything locked up: the potential for embarrassment is huge. When I last wrote on this topic, I fretted that the museum's losses might be just beginning; here's another one for the L column. While Büchel hasn't said if he plans to follow through on the idea of making artwork(s) out of the materials, MASS MoCA should hope he doesn't decide to let his inner Hans Haacke out. The filing by the artist's lawyers, link via Sergio, contains a few excerpts from the museum's emails that alternate between hilarious and damning. "If it's reviewed as a Büchel, we're in deep shit," one staff member is quoted as writing of the exhibition at one point. The museum's director comes across as almost blithely discussing the idea of opening the show as it stands, without the artist's consent, noting only, "Many ramifications of that, obviously." Yes, yes, quite so. We're just beginning to find out how many.
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