a258  1857  11 Mar 89
AM-Tilted Arc,0631
New York Sculpture Tests First Amendment
By VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press Writer
    NEW YORK (AP) - A judge, responding to an artist's appeal, has
ordered workers to stop dismantling a government-commissioned
sculpture once described as a potential ''terrorist device'' by a
security specialist.
    The artist, Richard Serra, filed legal action Friday when workers
with jackhammers began digging up the cobblestones around the
sculpture ''Tilted Arc'' in a lower Manhattan plaza on government
orders.
    ''This government is savage. It is eating its culture,'' Serra said
Saturday, a day after he asked Judge Robert P. Patterson of the U.S.
District Court in Manhattan for a last-ditch action.
    At 8 p.m. Friday, Patterson issued a temporary restraining order
valid until Thursday.
    Serra's lawyer, Jay Topkis, argued Serra's work falls under the
Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works,
which the United States joined March 1.
    The 112-foot-long, 12-foot-high rusting metal curve - for which,
Serra said, the Carter administration paid $175,000 - was installed
in front of a government office building at 26 Federal Plaza in 1981.
    The metal arc soon became the object of complaints.
    ''The removal of the sculpture will result in the community
receiving more open space,'' said William J. Diamond, the regional
administrator of the General Services Administration in charge of the
plaza.
    Removing the sculpture to a motor-vehicle compound in Brooklyn,
would ''allow for more benches and chairs and a more livable
environment,'' he said in Saturday's New York Times.
    Serra warned if his sculpture is removed, every artistic and
literary work commissioned by the government was in jeopardy of
censorship.
    ''It's a death blow, it's thoughtless and barbaric,'' said Serra.
''The U.S. government has never before destroyed a work of art it has
commissioned.''
    He blamed Diamond for the decision, saying the administrator was
responsible for a March 1985 public hearing in New York that
recommended the removal of ''Tilted Arc.''
    ''Diamond convened a hearing at which he was both the prosecutor and
the judge,'' Serra said. ''Diamond found the piece distasteful, but
that's no reason to destroy it.''
    GSA officials reached by telephone said Diamond would not be
available on Saturday to respond to Serra's charges.
    At the hearing, Serra said, ''a government security agent said that
'Tilted Arc' was a terrorist device, comparing it to those used by
bomb experts.''
    According to a transcript of the hearing which Serra quoted, Vickie
O'Dougherty, a security specialist for the GSA, testified that ''the
front curvature of the (sculpture's) design is comparable to devices
which are used by bomb experts to vent explosive forces. For
instance, they have bomb trucks designed for this purpose which are
cylindrical in shape and ... angled comparable to that (of 'Tilted
Arc').
    ''This (device) vents an explosion both upward and in an angle
toward both buildings,'' including a nearby FBI building and pistol
range, Serra quoted her as saying.
    At the request of the GSA, a National Endowment for the Arts panel
convened in December 1987 in New York and recommended the work not be
removed, Serra said, but ''the GSA decided to ignore the record of
hearing.''
    After the hearings, Serra filed suit, arguing that moving the work
would ruin it because it was site-specific, ''a cylinder that is
impaled into the ground.'' He also charged the government was
violating his First Amendment rights.
    A federal judge in August 1987 dismissed the suit, saying the
sculpture was an expression of free speech as protected by the First
Amendment, but that the government had the right to do what it wished
with its property.
    The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the judge's action in
May.
    
 
AP-NY-03-11-89 2141EST
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a237  1535  11 Mar 89
AM-Flag Art,0429
Artist Calls Flag Exhibit Revolutionary, Has No Apologies For Vets
LaserPhotos CX7
By SHERI PRASSO
Associated Press Writer
    CHICAGO (AP) - The student artist who enraged veterans by placing a
flag on the floor of the School of the Art Institute said Saturday
that the exhibit is a revolutionary statement and he has no
apologies.
    Flanked by members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, artist
''Dread'' Scott Tyler said the exhibit, titled ''What is the Proper
Way to Display a U.S. Flag?'' has gone beyond the issue of free
speech to that of race and revolution.
    ''I hope it will represent the hopes and inspirations of the
oppressed minorities both here and internationally,'' said Tyler,
wearing a T-shirt that bore the logo of the rap group ''Public
Enemy.''
    Tyler called the veterans groups who have protested the exhibit
''racists and Rambos,'' and said the flag has been more a symbol of
the Ku Klux Klan and world imperialism than of minorities.
    Protests began about week after the exhibit opened Feb. 17, and
veterans and others have tried to remove the flag several times. But
a state judge has rejected a lawsuit contending the work desecrates
the flag and the exhibit remained open Saturday.
    The flag is part a minority student exhibit and features the flag
positioned on the floor so that viewers are likely to step on it
while writing comments in a guest book. The exhibit also shows photos
of flag-draped coffins and South Koreans burning the flag.
    ''Apparently Ayatollah (Ruhollah) Khomeini isn't the only one who
thinks artists ... deserve a death sentence,'' Tyler said, referring
to the Iranian leader's condemnation of author Salman Rushdie for the
novel ''The Satanic Verses.''
    Tyler, 24, said he and his mother have received a number of death
threats. He planned to lead a rally of supporters Saturday at the Art
Institute but backed out fearing for his safety.
    At the rally, about 30 students surrounded by police barricades
chanted: ''Mandatory patriotism we say no; the thought police have
got to go.''
    ''It is not desecrating the symbol'' by placing it on the floor,
shouted Kate Donley, 16. ''It is elevating the symbol. That's what
freedom of speech is about.''
    About the same number of veterans and their supporters, also
surrounded by barricades, waved flags and signs asking drivers on
busy Michigan Avenue to honk in support of attempts to end the
display.
    ''The American flag is at stake,'' said Dan Calin, 63, a veteran of
World War II. ''Freedom of expression yes, but not when it's our
flag. It's an insult.''
    
 
AP-NY-03-11-89 1822EST
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