CLEVELAND, Ohio — A Cleveland artist who filed a lawsuit on February 14 over the destruction of an artwork intended to act as a 50-year time capsule in Ohio City said construction workers rebuffed him last year when he asked why they were mistreating the work.
Loren Naji grew alarmed last July when friends sent him photos of an outdoor sculpture he had created in 2011 for long-term display next to the West 25th Street rapid transit station.
The work had been piled with construction materials and enclosed behind a chain link fence. Fearing that the sculpture might have been endangered by Panzica Construction Co., the contractor building the adjacent nine-story Intro apartment complex, Naji took a look for himself.
The sculpture at issue was “They Have Landed,’’ an 8-foot-diameter, 1.5-ton plywood globe installed on a triangle of land on Lorain Avenue owned by the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority as a time capsule filled with memorabilia by the artist and neighborhood residents.
The work’s title was interpreted by the Ohio Outdoor Sculpture website, a project of The Sculpture Center, of Cleveland, as a humorous reference to UFO sightings.
“I drove to the construction site, and there were many workers,’’ and saw that the work was covered by construction materials, Naji said Monday in an interview with cleveland.com The Plain Dealer.
“I was kind of hurt by it,’’ he said. “It was sort of disrespectful, like somebody leaning something against your house. “They even put a tire on top of it, like making a joke of it.”
He continued: “I went to a guy with a hard hat and asked him, ‘could you not put your stuff on my sculpture?’ He shrugged. They sort of just ignored me.”
Naji said he also contacted Panzica and Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors, LLC, the developer of Intro, and RTA, to find out why his sculpture was being treated disrespectfully.
The recently constructed Intro apartments in Cleveland is known as one of the largest timber-framed buildings in the U.S.Steven Litt, cleveland.com
But by August, he said, construction workers had broken the artwork into pieces while trying to remove it from its base and had discarded the fragments.
The sculpture had been bolted through its base to a concrete anchor with four long threaded bolts. Naji said he guessed that the contractors had tried to remove it using straps and a forklift.
Naji said he spoke to a supervisor in the Panzica office at Intro who told him that the work had broken apart and they had thrown the pieces into a dumpster. When asked whether the manager was apologetic, Naji said, “kind of, not really, a little bit.’’
He said the manager told him the sculpture was “all rotted,’’ but he added, “I think they knew they were doing something they shouldn’t have done and they were looking for excuses.”
The manager turned over to Naji four of the plastic spheres in which residents had placed mementos for safekeeping in the time capsule., the artist said.
Legal action
Naji filed a federal lawsuit against Panzica and Harbor Bay on February 14, claiming they had violated his rights, as the owner of the artwork, under the federal Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990.
Among other things, the act provides for the moral rights of artists of recognized stature by prohibiting the destruction of their works.
“They destroyed a piece of public art that he [Naji] owned and had absolutely no right to destroy and it was entirely unnecessary and it’s tragic,’’ said Naji’s lawyer, Susannah Muskovitz. “Why did they have to destroy it? Why did no one contact the artist, who knew how it could have been moved nondestructively?”
Muskovitz said a plaque installed at the base of the sculpture clearly identified Naji, and that the work was a time capsule.
An undated photo of artist Loren Naji's time capsule sculpture, "They Have Landed,'' as it was installed and displayed between 2011 and 2022 on a triangular parcel next to the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority's West 25th Street Station.Christine Ripley
The lawsuit stated that RTA had signed a contract with the artist in 2011 to allow the artwork to remain until July 31, 2021. A typo in the lawsuit said the contract was signed in 2022. Muskovitz said she’d amend the document. She said the filing starts a period of roughly 90 days in which Panzica and Harbor Bay may respond.
Naji is seeking unspecified damages for financial losses, damage to his reputation, punitive damages, and attorney’s fees.
Tony Panzica, CEO of Panzica Construction Co., said: “I really don’t know anything other than we just got the suit. There’s nothing else I can say until we figure out what’s going on here.”
Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reached out to Harbor Bay and RTA.
Previous work
Born in New York in 1957, Naji earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art and has participated in local and regional exhibitions.
Considered a conceptual artist, he has focused at times on making idea-driven sculptures and projects that have generated media coverage related to social issues.
In 2016, he participated in the Grand Rapids ArtPrize, an international festival and competition that includes indoor and outdoor displays.
ArtPrize artist Loren Naji checks his Facebook page before going to sleep inside the homeless shelter at Mel Trotter Ministries in Grand Rapids on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016. Naji was invited by Mel Trotter to spend a night in the homeless shelter because his ArtPrize entry "Emoh: sculpture / time capsule & temporary home" was built using debris from abandoned homes and hopes to raise awareness for homelessness. (Cory Morse | MLive.com) Cory Morse | MLive.com
Naji’s ArtPrize project involved living in a spherical structure made of fragments of demolished houses as a way to promote awareness of homelessness. He said he’d donate the prize money to homeless charities in Michigan if he won.
Cleveland’s nonprofit CAN Journal said on its website that the work gained attention from newspapers across the U.S.
“I didn’t win,’’ Naji said Monday. “I came in fifth, which doesn’t even get a dime, but it was still a worthwhile experience. It was great.’’
A history of public art conflict
The conflict over Naji’s Ohio City sculpture is the latest in a series of historic battles over public art in Cleveland.
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s “Free Stamp,’’ was originally commissioned in the early 1980s for a site in Public Square next to the Sohio building, now 200 Public Square.
A couple stops to read the plaque near the FREE stamp in Willard Park in downtown Cleveland on Monday, July 18, 2022. Artists Claes Oldenburg (1929-2022) and Coosje van Bruggen (1942-2009) created the stamp and it was dedicated in the park on November 15, 1991. David Petkiewicz, cleveland.comDavid Petkiewicz, cleveland.com
The company famously rejected the proposal, and the sculpture ended up at Willard Park next to City Hall in a deal brokered by former mayor George Voinovich and Evan Turner, then director of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
In the mid-1990s, Cleveland artist Billie Lawless prevailed in a fight with the City of Cleveland over whether he could install his satirical sculpture “The Politician,’’ on a vacant lot controlled by the nonprofit Midtown Corridor, Inc.
The work, which resembled a child’s pull toy with jaws that would flap open and shut, reportedly irritated then-mayor Michael R. White, which the mayor denied in an interview with The Plain Dealer.
"The Politician: A Toy," by artist Billie Lawless, on the Cleveland State University campus.
Lawless had the work reinstalled from 2008 to 2019 on a parklike parcel owned by Cleveland State University at East 18th Street and Chester Avenue.
Lawless sued the university over violating his free speech rights by covering up words he attached to a fence around the artwork that some interpreted as a criticism of President Donald Trump.
Lawless settled with CSU for $50,000 and moved the work to his studio at Payne Avenue and East 45th Street, ideastream reported.
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