Guess which is bigger: the art or the argument?

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. -- From the day MASS MoCA opened in 1999, its defining space has been Building 5, the gallery almost invariably described as “football-field-sized,” meaning it was big enough to accommodate Robert Rauschenberg’s “The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece,” 206 panels of painting and collage, or Robert Wilson’s “14 Stations,” a Shaker Village reflecting on Jesus’ final march, or Tim Hawkinson’s “Überorgan,” balloon-like creations that seemed a cross between giant human bladders and bagpipes that bellowed tones as visitors passed.

“It’s how people remember when they were at MASS MoCA,” says Joe Thompson, director of the museum in a factory that once made Civil War uniforms. “They’ll say, ‘I was there the year exploding cars were floating through the gallery.’ ”

What many will remember from this summer, however, is how yellow tarps obscured what figured to be the most ambitious installation ever in Building 5.

True, they can get glimpses, above the tarps, of the bigger components of what was to be Swiss artist Christoph Buchel’s “Training Ground for Democracy” -- an entire two-story Cape Cod house, stacked cargo containers and a towering cinder-block wall alongside a re-creation of the “spider hole” in which Saddam Hussein hid in Iraq. And if they peek under the tarps, before a guard shoos them away, they may see hazardous waste containers or a swing-around carnival ride in which bombs replace the usual child-friendly miniature airplanes.

It was going to be a commentary on America’s efforts to remake the world through war and other means. Instead “Training Ground for Democracy” has become an expensive lesson in what can go wrong when a risk-taking museum partners with a risk-taking artist.

In May, the museum announced it was canceling the exhibit because it was behind schedule, over budget and facing its creator’s demands for more costly components -- notably a jet fuselage. The museum said it was going to federal court to win permission to show the unfinished piece as a “back-lot workshop . . . providing important insight into the intricacies of creating art in our time and day.”

That’s when Buchel countersued to keep the museum from doing any such thing and asked for damages, alleging that MASS MoCA had failed to provide materials it promised and was violating the federal Visual Artists Rights Act by showing his incomplete creation.

Thus the stalemate -- and tarps and guards -- at a time when the museum should be enjoying the Berkshires’ prime tourist season. U.S. District Judge Michael A. Posner is not scheduled to make a decision until Sept. 21, at the earliest, after visiting the site himself.

“An experience like this is like a punch in the nose,” says Thompson, who estimates that MASS MoCA spent $320,000 on the exhibit, twice what it planned and a sizable chunk for a museum that draws 120,000 visitors a year.

But Buchel has a lot invested too, according to his lawyer, Donn Zaretsky, who has waged a counterattack both in court and on his art law blog. He says Buchel canceled two other shows, one in Paris, to complete this piece that the museum now wants to display in “a drastically distorted and modified version.”

Although the legal process often leads to compromise, relations seem to have grown more bitter in this case.

Zaretsky points to how the museum sought “to mock and humiliate” Buchel by staging an exhibit titled “Made at MASS MoCA,” which spotlights how other ambitious installations were successfully created in Building 5. Though wall text notes that “Making Art Is Not Easy” and “Stumble-throughs” are normal, it also speaks of “Budget-Busting Debacles,” a clear reference to the tarp-obscured work that visitors must maneuver through to get to the exhibit.

Thompson, meanwhile, says Buchel has turned their dispute into a performance piece mocking him, in effect -- by selling copies of the museum’s legal complaint and his correspondence, which Buchel then signed.

“At this point, you know, we seem to be pretty far apart,” Zaretsky says. He portrays the issue as one of “artistic freedom and integrity” because of the museum’s bid to show the unfinished piece, inspiring Buchel’s invocation of the 1990 federal law adopted generally to protect murals and outdoor sculptures threatened by new development.

Perhaps no detail better spotlights the distance between the parties than the airplane. Zaretsky says the museum was always aware that Buchel wanted remnants of a plane in his piece and as proof posted an e-mail Thompson wrote telling the artist “the only big things we haven’t gotten are the airplane fuselage and one other. . . .” The museum chief’s e-mail also reported that workers were “hauling a ton of useful junk in every day … [but] I’m terrified about the costs. . . . So far we have zero in sponsorships, nada.”

Zaretsky says the section of airline hull Buchel wanted would have cost only $2,000, “and they ran out of money, then they came to him and said, ‘Oops we can’t do the work you proposed. Can we do something else?’ ”

“Not true,” Thompson says of that account, recalling instead that the museum did find a twin-engine Beechcraft for Buchel to blow up and burn but that the artist decided he’d rather have “a bigger house” for the piece, and that’s when they got the two-story Cape Cod. “Then very late the fuselage among other items emerged back as non-negotiable,” Thomson said. “He wanted a large airliner and the charred remains scattered through the gallery. . . . It was at that point I began drawing the line.”

Buchel, 40, who lives part of the time in Iceland, has designed politically themed installations throughout the world, including one in Los Angeles in 2003, where visitors squeezed through seven rooms he created in a boarded-up Hollywood Boulevard storefront, including a filthy bathroom, unkempt office and a waiting room filled with missiles, torpedoes and military ammo crates. .

Buchel’s legal papers say his “Training Ground for Democracy” at MASS MoCA was inspired by mock-up villages and virtual-reality training software designed by the U.S. Army and would have provided “role-play for its visitors … in relation to the collective project called ‘democracy’: training to be an immigrant, training to vote, protest, and revolt … training to be interrogated and detained.”

Had the exhibit been finished, museum-goers would have been able to climb into a re-creation of Saddam Hussein’s hiding place after the American invasion of Iraq, with details down to the slippers he wore.

Visitors also would have been able to scan the gallery from a viewing point above. But that sight line now is blocked by the museum’s own display listing items it obtained for the installation, including “1 Fuel Tanker, Cleaned … 1,000 green beverage cups from race track. . . 9 10’x8’x20’ Sea Containers … 10 Used Toothbrushes … 6 French barricades … 4 Ink Pads … Credit Card Reader … Bouillon Cubes … 21 Satellite Dishes …Heart-rate Monitor … Balloons from election rallies.”

The last item listed would have been the entry point for the show: “Abandoned Cineplex, moved and reconstructed including the box office, concession stand, projection booth and 200-seat raked-floor theater.”

The federal Visual Artists Rights Act mandates that an artist be notified if a work will be altered or destroyed, and the artist then has 90 days to remove it at his or her own expense or come to an agreement with the property’s owner. The law came into play in another Massachusetts case last year, when a developer sought to alter sculptures and stonework in a south Boston park, and also in California, when owners of a Silver Lake furniture store sought to paint over Ricardo Mendoza’s mural of faces and figures. That dispute was resolved with the mural’s being coated with a preservative so it might be uncovered someday.

At MASS MoCA, Thompson will not say what is planned for Building 5 next year, leaving room for hope that the bitter fight with Buchel could yet produce a settlement under which his installation would still see life, though both sides caution the public not to hold its breath.

“I don’t think Christoph would be willing to go back up there,” Zaretsky said.

“We’ve offered that” -- a 2008 redo -- “and every other thing,” Thompson said. But even if Buchel agreed, he noted, “No one has stepped in wanting to save the situation, ‘Let me write that other $200,000 check.’ ”

paul.lieberman@latimes.com