Yep, That Wasn't Art

From the San Francisco Chronicle: Two San Francisco artists plan to appeal a jury verdict that found a Nevada farmer wasn't liable for torching a replica of a Spanish galleon that was abandoned for years after a Burning Man Festival.....
 The pair sought damages from a 57-year-old Reno rancher, Michael Stewart, whose lawyers say he was simply clearing land he acquired when he burned the ship in 2006 after its display in several Burning Man festivals.
The artwork was built around a school bus with what the rancher says was a broken axle. The artists insist they never meant to abandon it.
The jury decided the artists had abandoned their work, but their lawyer insisted the replica galleon was a type of art protected by the U.S. Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, regardless of its location on private land.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert McQuaid Jr. ruled Thursday that the ship was little more than a mode of transportation and not a piece of fine art....
After sitting abandoned for two years in the harsh Nevada desert, the once iconic ship was more a rusty eyesore than a crowned jewel, Stewart's lawyer Keegan Low said.
Stewart considered the ship "junk" and torched it when he acquired the private property where it was stored, court documents show.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Rancher-cleared-in-torching-of-Burning-Man-ship-3782899.php#ixzz23OoafxbK

The jury made the right choice on this one.  These "artists" abandoned their "work" and the rancher got rid of it the best way he knew how- he burned it.

If the "artists" really wanted their work, they would have claimed it and brought it with them, to where ever they live.

They took a chance, they didn't communicate with the present or former land owner and now their piece of junk was incinerated.  Too bad too sad.