The artist who 30 years ago created a walkable land-and-water art installation at a Des Moines park has won a temporary reprieve from the work’s planned removal.

The Des Moines Art Center may not proceed with the immediate deconstruction of Mary Miss’ “Greenwood Pond: Double Site” after U.S. District Judge Stephen H. Locher issued a temporary restraining order late Monday, following a 78-minute hearing earlier in the day.

The art center, which took ownership of the artwork in the city’s Greenwood Park after Miss completed it in the mid-1990s, has said that structural decay has made “Double Site” an imminent public safety hazard and that it would be impossible to spend or raise enough money to refurbish it. But Locher’s ruling focused on a passage in the initial contract between the parties that says the “Art Center agrees that it will not intentionally damage, alter, relocate, modify or change the Work without the prior written approval of the Artist.”

Miss, who is based in New York, has not consented to the art center’s assertion that “Double Site” cannot be saved. Miss sued last week after months of correspondence did not produce an agreement.

Locher said in his 12-page ruling that another hearing will be held in the next two weeks on whether to formally extend the order or allow the art center to proceed.

Lawyers for the art center argued that removing the artwork was not the same as altering it and that its agreement with the city of Des Moines allowed discretion for removal. Locher wrote that Miss’ argument about the contract was more compelling, noting that “there is no evidence in the record to suggest that the city required the demolition of the artwork.”

The art center also did not prove that the site’s deterioration posed a safety hazard so severe that deconstruction had to begin right away, Locher wrote in his ruling, which also ordered Miss to post $100 bond to protect the art center’s interests if the restraining order is later found to have been wrongly imposed.

“We will be pausing plans to remove the artwork from Greenwood Park,” the art center said in a statement on its website Monday. “The sections declared dangerous and unsalvageable will remain enclosed in protective fencing.”

The Cultural Landscape Foundation of Washington, D.C., which has been working with Miss to advocate preserving the work, released a prepared statement attributed to Miss: “I am pleased and relieved by Judge Locher’s decision not only for what it has done for ‘Greenwood Pond: Double Site,’ but because it reaffirms the rights of all artists and the integrity of their legacies. Let’s use this opportunity to reach an outcome of which we can all be proud.”

Related coverage:

• Art center announces plans to begin removal of ‘Greenwood Pond: Double Site’
• Artist Mary Miss files lawsuit against Des Moines Art Center, tries to halt deconstruction of ‘Greenwood Pond: Double Site’