The May 14, 2013 Arts section of The New York Times features an article (“An Artwork Turns to Mush, All According to Plan”, by William Grimes) about the work of the artist James Grashow and a documentary that Olympia Stone, daughter of the art dealer Allan Stone, filmed about it. When Grashow’s papier mache sculptures were ruined after being left out on Allan Stone’s lawn for six months, he decided to accept the ephemeral nature of his materials and make work that would “embrace its own destruction”. Thus he made “Corrugated Fountain”, a multi-figure cardboard sculpture that in 2012 was displayed out of doors for six weeks at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield, CT) and then taken to a dumpster and disposed of. What would have been the ethical course of action if someone had taken the remains and brought them to a conservator for treatment?
What if later on someone took the piece to be restored?
