As with any work of art, the merit of Chapman Kelley’s "Wildflower Works I" was in the eye of the beholder.
Kelley, who normally works with paint and canvas, considered the twin oval gardens planted in 1984 at Daley Bicentennial Park his most important piece.
The Chicago Park District considered it a patch of raggedy vegetation on public property that could be dug up and replanted at will like the flower boxes along Michigan Avenue. And that’s what happened in June 2004, when the district decided to create a more orderly vista for pedestrians crossing from Millennium Park via the new Frank Gehry footbridge.
If you’re looking for evidence that the rubes who run the Park District don’t know art when they see it, all you have to do is visit what’s left of Kelley’s masterpiece. The exuberant 1.5-acre tangle of leggy wildflowers is now confined to a tidy rectangle, restrained on all sides by a knee-high hedge and surrounded by a closely cropped lawn. White hydrangeas and pink shrub roses complete the look. We don’t know who’s responsible for the redesign, but we’ll bet the carpet in his home doesn’t go with the furniture.
Still, you’d think the Park District was within its rights to plow under the prairie. Wrong. Kelley just won at lawsuit in which he argued that the garden was public art and therefore protected by the federal Visual Artists Rights Act. Under that law, the district should have given him 90 days’notice that it intended to mess with his artwork instead of rushing headlong into the demolition, a la Meigs Field. That way Kelley could have mounted a legal challenge, or at least removed the plants.
Park District officials said they never considered the garden a work of art, even though it was installed by an established artist and not, say, Joe’s Sod and Landscaping. We can understand their confusion. Just recently, we figured out that the caged greenery directly south of Pritzker Pavilion is supposed to be an architectural statement and not a Christmas tree lot.
All that’s left is for the district to compensate Kelley for his loss. Whatever price the parties settle on, let’s hope the agreement also provides for the removal of the rest of "Wildflower Works I". If it wasn’t an eyesore before—and plenty of people thought it was—it sure is now.
Why did Kelly win the lawsuit().
A. Kelly had a very capable lawyer.
B. The Park District had no right to demolish it.
C. The Park District should take the public’s opinion first.
D. The Park District should have informed Kelly of the demolition.
