Sunday, December 8, 2019

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

The Aldrich is in a modern building set behind rows of stately mansions on Ridgefield's Main Street.
It is Connecticut's only museum dedicated exclusively to contemporary art.
It has no permanent collection, simply temporary exhibitions.  When I visited last week,
many (but not all) were organized around themes of weather, atmosphere and global warming.



Eva LeWitt's site-specific installation was one of the exceptions.  She hung columns of brightly colored mesh fabric in a room.  Each mesh column had perhaps 10 mesh pieces of differing
colors and mesh sizes.  As one walked through the room, the interaction of 
the layers of mesh fabric played visual tricks on the eyes.


For someone as grounded in reality as me, much of the weather-themed art went over my head.
But this one was different.  Artist Ellen Harvey painted the 100 miles from Miami Beach 
through the Everglades to the Gulf of Mexico based on satellite photos.  
This is an environment most vulnerable to sea-level rise.  

4 comments:

  1. I think I would have liked both of these installations.

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  2. Both are really strong pieces, Jack! I do like those colourful mesh hangings.

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  3. I like Ellen Harvey's! It looks like photographs rather than paintings.

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