When the Chicago Park District announced last month that it had hired a New York landscape architect to redesign the northeast corner of Grant Park on a $45 million budget, including the controversial site of the new Chicago Children's Museum, there was no mention of an ongoing legal battle over what it's already done in that area. But there's a decision pending in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that's expected to have repercussions for artists and public art all over the country. The case addresses the question of whether artists have the legal right to protect their work from mutilation or destruction.

The plaintiff is artist Chapman Kelley, whose Wildflower Works, a 1.5-acre garden in the part of Grant Park known as D...