If it had been commissioned after 1990, it would have been more complex

According to an article in the Saturday January 21, 2017 Arts section of The New York Times (“A 1979 Sculpture’s Vanishing Act”, by Randy Kennedy), a 5 foot 2 inch tall sculpture by Pat Lasch which was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in 1979 as decoration for its 50th anniversary celebration, sat for years in the museum’s storage facility where it deteriorated beyond repair and it was eventually discarded. Ms. Lasch who spent months creating the sculpture found this out when she contacted the museum hoping to borrow the piece for her retrospective exhibit at the Palm Springs Art Museum. If the piece had been commissioned after 1990 when the Visual Artists Rights Act was enacted by Congress, whether MoMA would have had the legal right to discard what it purchased as ephemeral decoration and what Lasch considered a work of art would have been a more complex issue.