Damage to the walls of the Miami Beach Convention Center (photo courtesy of Miami-Dade County Courts)
As much as many of us may want to, punishing an artist over bad art can be very difficult. But Sarah Morris is now discovering that it is possible to do just that. The city of Miami Beach, Florida, is suing Morris because they allege poor artistry pertaining to her site-specific art at the Miami Beach Convention Center. In October 2016, the city of Miami Beach commissioned Morris to create a design that would adorn parts of the northern and eastern walls of the convention center as part of its renovation. The city also hired Franz Ackermann to decorate other parts of the exterior walls, Ellen Harvey to decorate some of the interior walls, as well as Joep van Lieshout, Michael Elmgreen, and Ingar Dragset to create sculptures. The final work consisted of a colorful pattern made from ceramic tiles. Morris titled the work Morris Lapidus, named after one of the leaders of 1950s Miami Modern architecture best known for designing the Fontainebleau Hotel. According to Morris’s contract with the city, the artist would be responsible for creating and installing the tiles and inspecting the walls to ensure they are suitable for the project. The city further specified that Morris would be accountable for repairing any damages to the work for the first two years after the completion of the work. The project ran three months behind schedule, but installation ended in July 2019. Morris received $1.1 million for the job.
Not even a year later, starting in the spring of 2020, tiles began to crack and fall off the walls. In the autumn, there were some days when twenty or thirty tiles per day were detaching from the wall, leaving heaps on the ground. The city had to erect protective barriers to prevent people from getting too close to the wall lest a falling tile strike a passerby. The city first contacted Morris in April 2020, prompting her to hire two contracting companies to inspect the walls. By the end of the year, after Morris took no action, the city had to hire a third engineering firm, which told them that one of the walls was completely unsuitable for the project and that all the tiles should be removed.
Miami Beach is seeking $1 million from Morris, her company Parallax LLC, and the two contracting companies Morris hired. Morris’s lawyers have called the lawsuit “an affront to the artist and to Miami Beach’s own standing among the leading cities hosting Ms. Morris’s work.” Morris and her lawyers are also trying to deflect blame onto, of all people, the construction company that built the convention center walls. However, the city, both in the initial contract and the lawsuit, stated clearly that “if [the convention center]’s walls could not support the Artwork, it was Artist’s contractual duty to notify the City before the Artwork was installed and to design a means of mitigating this issue”. Morris now demands that the city should pay for the tiles’ removal since, as her lawyers are keen to point out, Morris is an “internationally-acclaimed artist”, and paying for the damages would be detrimental to that reputation.