A part of an installation is hoisted into a warehouse for a Christoph Büchel show.

A federal judge ruled yesterday that the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art has the right to display an immense unfinished installation by Christoph Büchel, a Swiss artist whose relationship with the museum fell apart early this year, leading to a bitter public battle over control of the work and over artists’ rights in general.

The judge, Michael A. Ponsor, in Federal District Court in Springfield, Mass., said that the museum’s display of the work would not, as Mr. Büchel argued, violate the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, which provides that an artist has the right to “prevent the use of his or her name as the author of the work of visual art in the event of a distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work.”

In this case, one watched closely by the art world for the effect it might have on the relationship between museums and artists who create huge, complex works, Judge Ponsor said that the artist rights act did not apply, in essence because it has no provision to prohibit showing an unfinished work of art simply because it is unfinished.

Read full article (New York Times, September 22, 2007)