One may ponder the greater question, but what of the immediate damage to the art work?

In a Huffington Post piece entitled, “Miley Cyrus Strikes Again, or the Destruction of the Pendulum,” Julia Friedman discusses the removal of Dale Eldred’s 1973 sculpture from its site on the campus of Grand Valley State University after students appropriated it for a reenactment of Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” video due to its close resemblance to a wrecking ball. Friedman notes that the artist Richard Serra (who knows something about this from personal experience) believes that the removal of a site-specific work is equivalent to its destruction. Thus Eldred’s sculpture which is now in storage might be considered as “destroyed”. This is a large question we might ponder– although in a year or so when no one will be inclined to recreate Cyrus’ video, the sculpture could be reinstalled in its site. But what of the immediate damage that might have been inflicted on the sculpture when students climbed aboard it and swung?