Dispute Leads to Removal of Art Work

By Andrea Appleton
POSTED FEB. 2, 2007

One of the art installations in the lobby of 125 Maiden Lane is a forest of found objects—chair legs, tree limbs, bedposts—nailed together into a freestanding web of wood. In the far corner a small broken rocking horse sits on the floor, facing the wall. The piece, versions of which have appeared in other shows under different names, is called Why is the Horse Facing East? It is not a rhetorical question.

“The horse has never faced the wall before,” said artist Sook Jin Jo, the piece’s creator. “It’s my form of protest.”

The 2,000 invitations sent out in early January to announce Jo’s solo show, on view until April 20, featured a photo of Resurrection II, a wall-mounted installation of found dresser drawers. But by the time the show opened in mid-January, Resurrection II, the show’s centerpiece, had been removed. Instead, another piece stood in one corner, next to a blank wall where Resurrection II was to have hung. Jo, bowing to pressure from the show’s organizers, grudgingly agreed not to include it. That is why the horse is facing east.

The piece’s removal was the culmination of a complicated dispute involving several Downtown entities, including the World Financial Center and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC).

It began in November when Jo learned that another artwork, Floodwall, by New Orleans artist Jana Napoli, would soon be shown on the Liberty Street Bridge. Floodwall is also an installation of found dresser drawers. (An article about Floodwall, on display until Feb. 9, appeared in the January issue of the Trib.) Napoli collected her drawers in the shambles of New Orleans left by Hurricane Katrina. In this exhibit they sit upright along a platform.

Sook Jin Jo claims that Napoli stole the idea for Floodwall from Resurrection II, which she created in 1996. She cites two photos as her strongest evidence (see below): one depicts her piece, the other, a Floodwall prototype that formerly appeared on the Floodwall Web site and was reproduced in The New York Times. “The pieces are so strikingly alike,” said Jo, “that I cannot imagine that Floodwall was created without being influenced by my work.” She contends that Napoli must have been inspired by Resurrection II, which has appeared in several galleries, catalogs, and art magazines.

In mid-November, with her show already planned, Jo wrote a letter to both Napoli and the World Financial Center, co-sponsor of Floodwall along with the LMCC. She accused Napoli of copying her work.

A flurry of letters and meetings followed. Jo demanded that the Floodwall prototype photo most resembling Resurrection II be taken out of circulation. She also demanded that Napoli cite Resurrection II as her inspiration. Napoli contended that she had never heard of Resurrection II, and refused to give Jo acknowledgement (though the prototype photo did disappear from her Web site).

“Prior to receiving your letter 24 hours ago, I had never heard of, seen, nor had any knowledge of you or your body of works as an artist,” Napoli wrote Jo in a letter dated Nov. 30.  “I can further assure you...that, when presented in its entirety, Floodwall is not similar to Resurrection and any semblance of the two works is purely coincidental.”

(Napoli declined to be interviewed about the dispute, but in a recent e-mail to the Trib, she wrote: “It is all pretty astonishing, but really there is nothing else to say. We have work to do...New Orleans needs my attention for whatever little I can do for my city.”)

Jo said suing would be too expensive and time-consuming. So, having reached an impasse, the matter might have ended there—if it hadn’t been for the removal of Resurrection II from Jo’s show. In early January, Jo received word from Elizabeth Akkerman, her curator, that the piece would have to go.

The decision was precipitated by a call from the LMCC, when Akkerman first learned of Jo’s dispute with Jana Napoli. “Suddenly I was in the middle of something,” Akkerman told the Trib. “And these aren’t my questions as a curator. I’m not interested in people using my space as a battlefield.”

Jo was given three alternatives: to have the show in another space; to have it later in the year; or to pull Resurrection II. She chose the last option.

“It made no sense to postpone the show or have it somewhere else,” Jo says. “The invitation cards had already been sent out.”

Time Equities owns 125 Maiden Lane where Jo’s work is displayed in the lobby. Art philanthropist Francis Greenburger, CEO of the company and an LMCC board member, said he favored pulling Resurrection II from his space.

“It was simple common courtesy,” said Greenburger, who sponsored Jo’s show. “We were contacted by the director [Tom Healy] of LMCC, who indicated that he was uncomfortable with the piece being in the lobby because of the controversy.” The LMCC’s offices are on the second floor of 125 Maiden Lane.

“I didn’t want to do anything that was immediately in the face of the LMCC,” Greenburger said.

Neither the LMCC nor the World Financial Center would comment for this story, but both organizations have close ties with Floodwall. After Hurricane Katrina, the WFC gave 15 displaced Gulf Coast artists a nine-month residency in Manhattan. Napoli was one of them, and Floodwall was the result. Tom Healy, president of the LMCC, went to New Orleans and helped Napoli collect some of the drawers.

For Jo’s part, she is angry that the LMCC had a say in the pieces she showed, and she stands by her decision to protest the action. 

“Let the people judge,” she says. “If they think it’s just a coincidence that the two works are alike, why do they prevent me from showing mine?

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