Cadillac Ranch Impounded?
No Ant Farm members are implicated in the sex-abuse scandal that is rocking Amarillo, Texas. nonetheless, Ant Farm's iconic installation, "Cadillac Ranch" may be scrapped because of its patron's alleged child sex abuses. Stanley Marsh is an eccentric Texas oil heir and art patron. Since the 1970s he has been reaping respect and honor for sponsoring Ant Farm's renowned, renegade art installation. Now indignant citizens are campaigning to demolish the work because it provides public acclaim to a patron accused of committing deviant acts.
This controversy raises an ethical issue – is it ‘right’ to punish Ant Farm and disappoint future visitors to Cadillac Ranch, all of whom are blameless, for another’s sins? Both are threatened because its patron is being vilified forty years after the work was paid for and installed.
According to Benjamin Sutton, writing on ArtInfo, “The question of whether or not to scrap the strange automotive installation has been raised in light of a new series of lawsuits that, beginning in October of last year, have accused Marsh of sexually abusing 10 teenage boys, the New York Times reports. According to local residents, there have long been rumors of such behavior, but previous accusations by allegedly abused boys have always been settled out of court, allowing Marsh to save face in a community whose members, by and large, regard him as a model citizen…..”
“Others have been less lenient in their response to the ongoing legal action, calling for the removal of Cadillac Ranch, which they see as a monument Marsh. “When people find out what this man is really like, they’ll want to come out and help me bulldoze the place,” Anthony G. Buzbee, a Houston-based lawyer who represented alleged victims of Marsh’s abuse in 1996 and 2004 before settling out of court, told the Times.”
I would like to propose a compromise position: leave Cadillac Ranch just as it is and invite a dialogue to take place, in spray paint, right on the Cadillacs’ surviving hoods and fenders!