Fifty Years
Standing in the Shadows of Love: The Aldrich Collection 1964–1974 Part I: April 6 to September 21, 2014 Robert Indiana, Robert Morris, Ree Morton, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Smithson Part II October 19, 2014, to April 5, 2015 Richard Artschwager, Eva Hesse,
Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Richard Serra Curated by Richard Klein and Amy Smith-Stewart
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is marking its 50th Anniversary with a series of exhibitions and programs that examine the Museum’s formative years of 1964 to 1974 through a contemporary lens, illuminating the lasting impact of a seminal period of history. Standing in the Shadows of Love: The Aldrich Collection 1964–1974—a two-part exhibition of iconic works that are representative of The Aldrich’s early collection acquired by founder Larry Aldrich—has also created a platform for a cross-generational dialogue. Because thousands of truly significant artworks have been presented at the Museum during its storied history, selecting just a few archetypal works was a challenging enterprise, undertaken by the curators in partnership with the eight contemporary artists who are presenting solo exhibitions at The Aldrich this year: Taylor Davis: If you steal a horse, and let him go, he’ll take you to the barn you stole him from Kate Gilmore: A Roll in the Way Jessica Jackson Hutchins: Unicorn Michael Joo: Drift Michelle Lopez: Angels, Flags, Bangs Ernesto Neto: The Body That Gravitates on Me David Scanavino: Imperial Texture Cary Smith: Your Eyes They Turn Me We are grateful to these artists for their insightful responses to the artists that defined the Museum’s formative years, and for their remarkable contributions to the celebration of a significant benchmark for The Aldrich. By opening a conversation between the historical works and the work of the younger artists, this suite of exhibitions clearly and specifically reveals the continuing influence of both the art and culture of the 1960s. Today’s artists provide the interpretation, evolution, and further development of themes and ideas expressed and explored in the classic works on view, testifying to the influence and impact of the artists identified and supported by Mr. Aldrich before they were proven, at a time when they were still forming the visual vocabulary that would come to define an era. The 1960s and early 1970s still reverberate in our culture fifty years later, as concerns that were news then—such as poverty, civil rights, women’s rights, the rise of media culture and “youth culture,” the inception of the environmental movement, and the questioning of America’s role as a world power—continue to be critical issues at the core of our social and political discourse, still resonating with great urgency and relevance. Although various historical periods are regularly mined by contemporary artists, the 1960s are looked upon as a “hinge” between Modernism and what came to be known as Post-Modernism, sowing the seeds for a world-view that still defines many of our beliefs. It is appropriate that the occasion of the anniversary has provided an opportunity to reflect on the legacy that Mr. Aldrich created, and to use the perspective gained over the years to better appreciate his prescient vision and remarkable dedication to advancing contemporary art by supporting the artists of our time. The works presented in Standing in the Shadows of Love are exemplary of the remarkable range and lasting impact of the artists Mr. Aldrich championed early in their careers, a practice that continues to be honored in the mission of the Museum. As we mark this halfcentury milestone, we honor the principles that he developed by remaining firmly grounded in the present while keenly aware of the powerful links between the era in which the Museum was founded and current artistic practice.
View from Main: (left to lright) The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and “Old Hundred” Photo © Peter Aaron/Esto
Standing in the Shadows of Love
The works included in Standing in the Shadows of Love are either the actual pieces that were in the Museum’s early collection, or comparable examples of the artist’s work from the same period. They are presented in transitional spaces throughout the Museum, along with materials from The Aldrich’s archive that document the close collaboration and intimate connections between the exhibiting artists and the institution. The Museum is grateful to curatorial intern Catherine Lucia for her assistance in researching The Aldrich’s early collection, particularly her help in tracking down the present whereabouts of works. Her groundwork in the early stages of planning for the exhibition was critical to the success of Standing in the Shadows of Love: The Aldrich Collection 1964 – 1974. We very much appreciate the generosity of the following lenders: Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Detroit Institute of Arts; Beth Rudin DeWoody; Gary Lichtenstein Editions at MANA; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, New York; James Cohan Gallery; Robert Indiana; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Richard Serra; Mitchel Skolnick; Estate of Robert Smithson; and Yale University Art Gallery. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of our Board of Trustees, whose guidance and good counsel have contributed immeasurably to The Aldrich’s continued success. I offer special thanks for the commitment and passion of the Museum’s staff—their enthusiasm for our mission, and devotion to upholding and honoring Mr. Aldrich’s legacy, have made this Museum a leader in the field, keeping it always at the forefront of the presentation and interpretation of the most innovative and relevant contemporary art. –Alyson Baker, executive director
We look at RIchard Artschwager’s objects like it’s the first time we’ve ever seen a table, a book, or in this case, a pyramid. They recreate an experience that existed before recognition, before language, and before function. They’re beautifully made to scale, with all the technique and craft of their real-world subjects, but their non-functionality, or uselessness, evokes a sense of tragicomedy. They compel us to examine what is physically in front of us and ultimately the assumptions we make about the world around us. They make us smile at our awareness of our own expectations. –David Scanavino At The Aldrich, David Scanavino debuts a site-specific floor installation and large-scale wall relief, transforming the South Gallery into both an experiential sculpture and an engaging platform for interactivity. Scanavino exploits the legacy of Minimalism, with its affinity for reduced forms and industrial surfaces, but instead of polished steel and aluminum, he employs cheap, institutional materials like linoleum and newsprint pulp. For Imperial Texture, Scanavino applied multicolored 1 x 1 foot linoleum tiles in a dizzying pattern, mimicking pixel arrays in an enlarged, compressed jpeg. The work generates a tantalizing optical sensation, challenging the viewer’s dimensional perception and offering an intensified sensorial experience about body, site, and spatial composition. Applied by hand and comprised of a colorful construction paper pulp whose palette complements the floor, Peacock (2014) spans a gallery wall.
David Scanavino, Untitled (Imperial Study, detail), 2013 Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York
Richard Artschwager, Pyramidal Object, 1967 The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art , Gift of Larry Aldrich, in honor of Mr. Richard Tucker, a friend and Trustee of Cornell University Photography courtesy of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
–AS
I am very influenced by everybody from the 1960s: the Brazilians such as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, the Minimalists, Arte Povera. I think that it was a very special moment for sculpture in general. People had the need to see the world through the body, to have the truth of three-dimensionality, to move away from illusion. Eva Hesse is very inspiring to me because of her groundbreaking work with textiles. I’ve worked with fabric for over twenty years now and people have repeatedly said to me, “You should put some polyester on it.” I even experimented once with stretching fabric and painting it with polyester to make it hard. So, maybe because people were encouraging me to do this, and because she had worked that way, I responded by not wanting to go in that direction. –Ernesto Neto
Eva Hesse, Accession, 1967 Collection of Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Friends of Modern Art Fund and Miscellaneous Gifts Fund Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library © The Estate of Eva Hesse The Estate of Eve Hesse is represented by Hauser & Wirth
Ernesto Neto has become internationally known for translucent organic sculptures that often take on architectural proportions. Frequently blurring boundaries between inside and outside, weightlessness and gravitational pull, Neto’s work exhibits both playfulness and a formal rigor that is often—literally—stretched to the extreme by his use of flexible synthetic fabrics, particularly those used in stockings and tights: nylon and polyamide. Neto’s work, The Body That Gravitates on Me, is installed in The Aldrich’s atrium, with its pendulous appendages dangling from the space’s twenty-five-foot ceiling. It has been juxtaposed with Accession II, a work by Eva Hesse from 1967 that was in Larry Aldrich’s collection. Like Neto’s work in the present day, in the 1960s Hesse’s sculpture referenced the body and utilized unusual and fragile materials in the service of reconciling formalism with figurative concerns. –RK
Ernesto Neto, The Body That Gravitates on Me, 2006 Polyamide fabric, Styrofoam, nylon stockings, sand Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
On Robert Indiana When you love someone that convention disallows, you think about love a lot. More days than not, I wear a black belt that says, “You are my beloved and I am well pleased with you.” It’s my version of “God is Love” and “Love is God.” I made it in 2008, five years after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided in favor of Goodridge, the day after Sue and I went to city hall to get our marriage license. I wear it to remember that my beloved and I are loved for loving. –Taylor Davis
Robert Indiana, Love is God, 2014 Screenprint in 18 colors on museum board (Based on the artist’s 1964 painting, Love is God) Courtesy of the artist ©2014 Robert Indiana Photo: ©2014 Robert Indiana Studio
Taylor Davis, SOME HAE, 2011 Wacky Wood and oil paint Courtesy of the artist
Taylor Davis’s cylindrical text pieces point to the circular sense of movement that is inherent in both the conceptual and physical aspects of her work. Davis’s deep interest in sculpture is based in the way that a viewer’s orientation can be influenced by the perception of both form and language in space, and how this experience is an analogy to the ongoing need to constantly orient oneself in relationship to the world. Both Davis’s sculpture and collagebased works accentuate or comment on spatial perception, creating situations where the viewer’s bearings become either heightened or unsettled. But Davis’s work goes beyond dealing purely with space by drawing content from aspects of both high and low culture. The artist’s persistent engagement with the issue of orientation utilizes form, color, subject, identity, place, material, and language to make art that consistently—and often vexingly— calls what is known into question. –RK
Ree Morton, Bozeman, Montana, 1974 Mixed media Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody
I teach an undergraduate sculpture studio as MassArt. Every semester I ask my students to identify artists who make work that looks nothing like their own work, who do what they themselves haven’t done, and who they LOVE. We talk about desire, the longing for someone who makes the world feel bigger and better; who makes us feel stronger because they give us permission to do things we didn’t know we could do. I LOVE Ree Morton. She was radical. She took the wall and hooked it up to the floor and made a new space. She put light bulbs in parenthesis. She painted sticks, and bows. She situated fishes. And re-situated paintings. She read deeply, and looked carefully. She drank beer. Her work is funny and really really tough. She made beautiful work for people she loved. –Taylor Davis
Taylor Davis, Frogs and Hats, 2013 Collage and watercolor Courtesy of the artist
Ellsworth Kelly has created some of the most natural, open, bright, fiercely beautiful hard edge, Minimalist paintings ever. He just seems to perfectly and eloquently portray the core of visuality in the strongest most direct, and yet highly refined manner, time after time. He sings on top of the note, and it carries through space like a generous, dart of wisdom, hitting the bullseye in our eyes. His work is enlightened. –Cary Smith
Ellsworth Kelly, Yellow Piece, 1966 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of the artist and The Riklis Collection of McCrory Corporation by exchange, 2013 Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY
Over the course of the past twenty-five years, the painter Cary Smith has engaged in a restless, but controlled, pursuit of abstraction. Smith’s work has been consistently categorized by a particular poetic logic, rigorous craft, and a beautiful, but not gratuitous, color sense. Working in the wake of the freedom presented by the collapse of Modernism’s rigid dogmas, the artist’s work vacillates between geometric and biomorphic abstraction and is witness to a range of subtle (and often surprising) influences, including the aesthetics of eighteenth and nineteenth century New England and the visual vocabulary found in Mid-Century art and design. Smith’s exhibition, entitled Your Eyes They Turn Me, focuses on work completed since 2008, including his Splats, radiating works that utilize a splash-like motif, and Grey Bars, optically active, geometric grids that exhibit a music-like tonality. The title Your Eyes They Turn Me (appropriated from a song by Radiohead), suggests optical attraction, desire, and movement—all things that a viewer encounters in the artist’s work. –RK
Cary Smith, Splat #16 (yellow-pale blue with color blocks), 2014 Oil on linen Courtesy of the artist
Agnes Martin, The Rose, 1964 Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Purchase with assistance from Wintario, 1979 Š 2014 Agnes Martin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Sean Weaver, Art Gallery of Ontario
Cary Smith, Grey Blocks #24, 2014 Oil on linen Courtesy of the artist
Agnes Martin’s sensitivity makes her paintings vibrate with a quiet hum of purity and humanity. Every detail is so gently, yet confidently rendered, while there is at the same time a deep awareness of the whole. Her paintings feel like warm wind in the early summer that reminds you how good it is to be alive. In her hands the grid breathes with life. –Cary Smith
I like the contradictions in Robert Morris’s practice: his physical construction is linear, his material and form strictly utilitarian. Yet the results bring forth an “uncanny materiality.” The gravity of the felt and its anti-formed drape give it a peculiar kind of longing. His work has a kinesthetic quality that defies logic. Robert Morris’s involvement with dance, particularly with the Judson Group, makes sense in terms of a sculptural practice. It’s significant that Morris’s dance work has dancers moving sheets of plywood, but in the least expressive, unromantic way. Yet the presence of the body immediately complicates the gesture. For the body is romantic. –Michelle Lopez The practice of sculptor Michelle Lopez explores the contested yet generative place where Minimalism and feminism converge, diverge, and ultimately reunite. The languages she employs—material, form, and space—seek to “corrupt minimalism,” as she describes it, by making “macho sculpture feminine.” The Aldrich presents new and recent sculptures that span three bodies of work. Three approximately nine-foot-tall sculptures from the Blue Angels series (2011) lean precariously against the wall after Lopez wrestles with the material through an intensive system of folding exercises. The Flags series (2013) transforms symbols most often associated with victory and patriotism into delicate, frail objects. Bangs, a sitespecific sculptural installation made from elevator blankets, merges the soft felt sculptures of Robert Morris with the stylized female characters of Japanese anime.
Robert Morris, Untitled (Version 1 in 19 Parts), 1968/2002 Felt; overall 103 x 85 x 44 inches Yale University Art Gallery, Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund
Michelle Lopez, Flag Series (I), 2014 Courtesy of the artist and Simon Preston Gallery, New York
–AS
Robert Rauschenberg’s work is the effort of relating and relationships. The problems he invents and solves are grounded (transcending nothing), not poetic or symbolic, but could find a cadent equivalent in Walt Whitman. The paintings are sensuous and easy with the materials of the world. Affectionate. There is a vigorous absorption of everything else, but that this polyvalence always only leads straight back to the singularity of that work at that time, is the song of himself. –Jessica Jackson Hutchins
Jessica Jackson Hutchins makes use of the things around her—clothing, chairs, tables, and sofas—to create objects that craft poetry out of the everyday, connecting the human with the abstract, the relatable with the enigmatic. She describes the catalyst for her process as an editing of sorts: forging a connectivity with the personal, in order to destabilize/disrupt it; using a “by-any-means-necessary” strategy to impart to the everyday a surreptitious multivalance. By inserting ceramic into and onto recognizable forms, Hutchins uses abject humor to tenderize her objects/subjects, to humanize art and process, (un)making the sincere and the feigned. Her Aldrich exhibition brings together sculptures and monoprints created for the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in 2010, along with a new sculpture. In one piece, Hutchins’s own baby grand piano, a symbol of family-circle time, stands at center stage. A ceramic form reminiscent of a unicorn’s horn stands on top, highlighting the etched, routed, and graffitied surface, where a series of large-scale wood-cut and collaged prints have been pressed. The keys are colorfully stained and words imprinted on the piano lid read “children of the sunshine,” the name of a song performed by Hutchins’s family and friends in a related video. –AS
Jessica Jackson Hutchins, ADAM (with Pink Flowers), 2010 Private collection, New York Courtesy of the artist and Timothy Taylor Gallery, London Photo courtesy of Laurel Gitlen, New York
Richard Serra, Bent PIpe Roll, 1968 Collection of the artist Photo: Peter Moore
How do we write about Richard Serra? Do we say that he is one of the greatest living sculptors? Do we talk about the way he has taught us to intimidate with material? Do we talk about the myth, fable, fiction, non-fiction of the artist? Do we talk about his masculinity? His strength? His process? Do we talk about how every sculptor has him to thank and him to fight against? Do we talk about force, brutality, violence? Do we describe the monumental, the minimal, the weight in his work? Do we mention his finesse, touch, sensitivity? Do we reference a personal memory of walking through one of his torqued ellipses and hyperventilating because we thought the walls would fall on us? Do we say that while we thought we were going to be crushed to death, we loved it still? Should we reveal that we are jealous of his size, power, might? Do we admit that every time we make something we have to come to terms with HIM? –Kate Gilmore
Love ‘Em, Leave ‘Em (Installation view at MoCA Cleveland), 2013 Courtesy of the artist and David Castillo Gallery, Miami Photo: Cliff Borress
Kate Gilmore’s practice spans video, performance, sculpture, and photography. She is almost always the sole protagonist in her videos, which are recorded either privately in her studio or onsite, never rehearsed and only attempted once. She assumes the roles of characters who are subjected to situations on makeshift sets that act as the catalyst for a mélange of wacky plays on art and life. At The Aldrich, Gilmore debuts a new sitespecific sculpture and video that is a record of a private performance produced within the Museum’s walls. The video documents Gilmore’s systematic actions—lifting heavy logs, dipping them in paint, and rolling them onto a large white base. The monumental scale of the resulting sculpture is a testament to the incredible physicality of Gilmore’s work, reminiscent of the infinitives Richard Serra used to describe his own art process: “to drop,” “to roll,” “to splash.” –AS
I have been engaging and disengaging from a dialogue with Robert Smithson’s work for the past twenty years. In 1986, as a young biology student on academic leave, I was working for a seed-science company in Austria. The past year’s reading of J. G. Ballard’s The Crystal World was still fresh when my supervisor handed me a copy of the recently published The Writings of Robert Smithson. It left an indelible impression, and that fall I applied to art schools in the States, got into one, quit my job, and began the pursuit of art. I continue to be engaged by Smithson’s writing and work from the short decade of his mature art production; the time when I was born. His use of the language and structures of science in an incisive and even poetic, though non-subjective manner has resonance for me. Of contemporary significance in his work is his insistence on transcending the seduction of the technology and easy answers of the science itself, to generate a set of questions that would help to place humans and artwork in the context of the planet and unbiased histories. In my work, sites—though context specific—are also concerned with a larger, ultimately more inclusive sphere. My past work has had me waiting for elk to lick salt from my body, getting it into their bloodstreams, or walking along the length of the TransAlaska Pipeline against the flow of millions of years of fossil fuel. Recent work involves the transformation of hand-mined crystal into two-way mirrored architecture that reflects only the context of its interior or the repatriation of fragments of a Moroccan fossil bed. In the end, as a contemporary artist I find connection with Smithson’s work in its contextualization within Minimalism in the artist’s time. Though identified with a major movement and group of artists, his work remains impossible to categorize and still speaks of the present and future. –Michael Joo
–RK
Michael Joo, Marble Strata Room (installation view at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum), 2014 Courtesy Michael Joo Studio, New York. Photo: Chad Kleitsch
Robert Smithson, Three Mirror Vortex, 1965 Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Larry Aldrich, 1981 (1981.501 a-e) Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image Sorce: Art Resource, NY
Over a career that now spans two decades, Michael Joo has redefined sculpture, creating a body of work that transcends the seduction of technology and the easy answers offered by science to generate a set of questions that place humankind in the context of natural history. Joo, like artist Robert Smithson before him, engages with a deep sense of time, as well as with the cycles of creation and entropy inherent in both nature and human endeavor. In Drift, Joo’s new project created specifically for The Aldrich, the artist has expanded Smithson’s notion of site/non-site by connecting the interior of the Museum to the surrounding landscape and its specific history. Drift is based on Joo’s meditation on Cameron’s Line, an ancient suture fault that traces the edge of the continental collision that initiated the formation of the Appalachian Mountains. The line—which runs north from New York City through Westchester County, passes through Ridgefield as it traverses Connecticut, then crosses Massachusetts into Vermont—is defined by a belt of marble that includes the famous quarries of Vermont. The exhibition poses Cameron’s Line as a linear experience through both time and space, and features a massive displacement of Vermont marble that takes the form of a mirrored, fourteen-hundred-cubic-foot chamber, whose chilled and frosted ceiling echoes the marble’s crystalline structure.
Larry Aldrich was invited to select the artists for Art in America’s biennial “New Talent USA” feature in 1996. The following excerpts are taken from the essay he contributed to the July/ August issue that introduced the thirty-seven artists he had chosen. In the 1940s, to decorate the walls of our house in Ridgefield, Connecticut, we bought a Utrillo and a Renoir. Through exposure to these paintings, I gradually became aware that in a work of art, there exists a force and an excitement that goes far beyond mere decoration. With my interest aroused, I attempted to acquire a “Do-It-Yourself Education in Modern Art.” On semi-annual trips to Paris, in connection with my activity in the fashion business, I would take time to visit art galleries, always finding paintings to bring home. My collection grew, and by 1950 it consisted of a Manet oil sketch of 1875 and examples of most of the well-known artists from the impressionist period up to the expressionists of the 1920s. As a collection, it was not very adventuresome, but finding and acquiring each object was a great adventure for me. I became a victim of a delightful disease for which there is no cure, art collecting. Almost from the beginning of my interest in art, I attended gallery exhibitions of the work of contemporary artists. Abstract expressionism was then well on its way, but I seemed to lack the comprehension to appreciate what the painters of that style were trying to say. They were so very different from what my own collection represented. I realize now that the tendency to reject the unfamiliar when it is first exposed to view is a commonplace reaction for most people. However, I continued to look. I did not overcome my inability to respond to the new art until 1951. It began with the purchase in Paris of two pictures: a Zao-Wou-Ki for $100 and a Vieira da Silva for $150. Both artists were completely new to me. Somehow this modest first purchase of contemporary work broke the barrier of my inability to accept and appreciate the new art. Although I had seen examples of Klee, Miró and Léger before 1951, it was only after my first acquisition of contemporary art that I bought examples of the work of these modern masters. The purchase of these modern masters was incidental to my principal art activity—concentrating more and more on the contemporary scene. As my involvement and enthusiasm grew, so also did my collection. The adventure of collecting now revolved principally around making my collection adventuresome.
Letter from Robert Indiana to Larry Aldrich, 1973 Collection of The Aldrich Museum Archives
As an expression of my great interest in the struggles of younger artists, in 1959 I entered into an arrangement with the Museum of Modern Art whereby I provided an annual sum for the purchase of painting and sculpture by American artists who were not already represented in the museum’s collection. To be certain the fund would be used to buy the work of young artists, I made the stipulation that no single item could cost more than $1,000. A few of the artists represented (some of whose works cost only a few hundred dollars) are: Frank Stella, Jack Youngerman, Robert Mallary, James McGarrell, Edward Higgins, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Goerge Ortman, Bruce Conner, William Reimann, Robert Indiana, Lucas Samaras, Tom Wesselmann, John Anderson and Larry Poons. These were all young innovators on the art scene when their work was bought by the museum. In 1963, I disposed of most of my early acquisitions, using some of the funds to start a purchasing program at the Whitney Museum similar to my earlier arrangement with the Museum of Modern Art and with the same stipulation of a limit of $1,000 per item. Creative artists are constantly struggling for new means of expression, seeking new directions and exploring the use of new materials. The viewing of new work of promise is a thrilling experience for someone deeply involved in contemporary art. Standards which might be used in the visual appraisal of the merits of familiar art, however, do not apply to new work. A favorable response to what I term “art which is not yet” results from an inner feeling that “this is good”—a feeling I have learned to trust in making new acquisitions, even though I have made
my fair share of mistakes. Anyone who attempts to evaluate new directions in art on an intellectual level is bound to come a cropper. Without the support of a growing audience of “art nuts” willing to acquire the work of artists attempting to blaze new art trails before they completely succeed, many creative artists of promise would find it almost impossible to develop maturity in their work. After the disposal of my early acquisitions, I was more open-minded than ever about contemporary art. I still had about three hundred contemporary art objects, a large number of them in storage and I continued adding to the collection. Like the old woman who lived in a shoe, I had so many art objects I didn’t know what to do. So I created a museum. In December 1963, I had noticed a “For Sale” sign on a large eighteenth-century house on the lovely Main Street of Ridgefield, Connecticut. Idle curiosity prompted me to peer through the windows. For an old house, the ceilings were unusually high. I was struck with the thought that this building would be a wonderful place for exhibitions. In November of 1964, after extensive alterations, my museum was opened to the public. –Larry Aldrich, founder Originally published in Art in America, July/August 1966, pp, 22–69. Courtesy BMP Media Holdings, LLC.
Works in the Exhibition All dimensions h x w x d in inches Richard Artschwager Pyramidal Object, 1967 Formica, wood 74 9/16 x 45 1/16 x 27 3/16 The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Gift of Larry Aldrich, in honor of Mr. Richard Tucker, a friend and Trustee of Cornell University
Larry Aldrich in The ALdrich Museum, circa 1967
Eva Hesse Accession II, 1968 (1969) Galvanized steel, vinyl 30 他 x 30 他 x 30 他 Collection of Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Friends of Modern Art Fund and Miscellaneous Gifts Fund Robert Indiana Love Is God, 2014 Screenprint in 18 colors on museum board Image size 68 x 68 diagonal; paper size 84 x 84 diagonal Published and printed by Gary Lichtenstein Editions at MANA Courtesy of the artist 息2014 Robert Indiana Ellsworth Kelly Yellow Piece, 1966 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas 75 x 75 The Museum of Modern Art, New York Gift of the artist and The Riklis Collection of McCrory Corporation (both by exchange), 2013 Agnes Martin (America, 1912-2004) The Rose, 1964 Oil, red and black pencil, sizing on canvas Overall 71 7/8 x 71 15/16 Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Purchase with assistance from Wintario, 1979 78/751
Robert Morris Untitled (Version 1 in 19 Parts), 1968/2002 Felt Overall 103 x 85 x 44 Yale University Art Gallery, Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund (2002.76.2a-q) Ree Morton Bozeman, Montana, 1974 Mixed media 84 x 139 x 3 Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody Robert Rauschenberg Umpire, 1965 Tape, color ink, silkscreen, collage and solvent transfer on paper 35 1/2 x 31 1/2 Private collection Richard Serra Bent Pipe Roll, 1968 Lead 56 x 6 x 50 Collection of the artist Robert Smithson Three Mirror Vortex, 1965 Stainless steel and 3 mirrors 35 x 28 x 28 Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Larry Aldrich, 1981 (1981.501 a-e) Gravel-Mirror, 1969 Mirrors, gravel 48 x 48 x 1/4 (each mirror) On view exhibition copy: Estate of Robert Smithson, courtesy of James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum advances creative thinking by connecting today’s artists with individuals and communities in unexpected and stimulating ways.
Board of Trustees Eric G. Diefenbach, Chairman; Linda M. Dugan, Vice-Chairman; William Burback, Treasurer/Secretary; Diana Bowes; Chris Doyle; Annabelle K. Garrett; Georganne Aldrich Heller, Honorary Trustee; Michael Joo; Neil Marcus; Kathleen O’Grady; Lori L. Ordover; Martin Sosnoff, Trustee Emeritus; John Tremaine
Larry Aldrich (1906–2001), Founder
Major support for Museum operations has been provided by members of The Aldrich Board of Trustees, and the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation.
Robert Indiana, Love is God, 2014 Screenprint in 18 colors on museum board (Based on the artist’s 1964 painting, Love is God) Courtesy of the artist ©2014 Robert Indiana Photo: ©2014 Robert Indiana Studio
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