: For more than a year The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art has
been using "look... look again" in marketing-related materials, a
hint at what the public could expect once the museum reopened its
doors.
The museum reopened on June 13 after 14 months of major
renovation and expansion. It is now home to 25,000 square feet of
new and redesigned exhibition space including a screening room, a
sound gallery, a 22-foot-high project space, a 100-seat
performance space, a state-of-the-art education center, improved
visitor amenities and a redesigned two-acre outdoor exhibition
space.
Although museum director Harry Philbrick told Antiques and The
Arts Weekly last year that, "the entire plan is really
designed to accommodate what we do now, not necessarily increase
the number of programs that we do," the expansion has already
proven that the Aldrich will indeed be offering more to visitors.
"While the museum is remaining on a trimester schedule, with the
old building we were able to present two to three major shows
each year. Now we can offer eight new projects including
sculpture," Aldrich curator Jessia Hough pointed out recently.
"This building allows us more flexibility in starting and
stopping our exhibitions.
"Whenever a visitor comes in, the spaces will be different," she
said.
Architect Charles Hay took great care to create a space that will
meet the growing needs of the museum staff and visitors, and
continue to accommodate art within a very historic community. The
museum is located within a building originally constructed in
1738 and is on a very traditional-looking Main Street filled with
great big Colonial-era mansions, small shops and restaurants.
"We've got a real balancing act with the building and its
historic district," Philbrick said in back in April 2003. "This
is a building that tries to hold the idea of a historic district
and contemporary art together."
Hay and the team from Tappé Associates obviously listened to the
museum board's concerns before creating their designs.
The building's design presents a solution to the conflicts that
arose when a museum dedicated to exhibiting cutting-edge art is
located within a historic district and needs to stretch its legs.
Based on an abstraction of traditional New England architecture,
the building now features a double-peaked, multilevel roof that
slopes downward toward the back, from peaked to flat, moving the
eye from the street-facing façade to the rear landscape while
emphasizing the building's context.
"Old Hundred," the original 6,000-square-foot historic house at
258 Main Street constructed in 1783, has been rebuilt to its
original beautiful character. An addition that had been put onto
the museum in 1986 has been razed and a brand-new,
19,000-square-foot building has been constructed to the east of
Old Hundred, with the two buildings connected by an entrance
plaza and a series of terraced steps.
Old Hundred will now be used as the museum's administrative
offices, while the new building will house the public galleries,
education center and workshops.
The first floor of the museum houses the main lobby, information
desk, bookstore, screening room, the new education center and the
Leir Gallery - a performance and exhibition space with seating
for more than 100 people.
A fully dedicated education center will allow the museum to host
more hands-on programs and workshops.
Even the lobby has been turned into exhibition space, with the
British artist Laura Ford presenting her "Headthinkers" series in
the grand reception space and her most recent installation,
"Wreckers," in the adjoining hallway.
One of museum director Harry Philbrick's favorite new amenities:
a camera obscura. Taken literally from New Latin to mean "dark
chamber," a camera obscura is a darkened enclosure with an
aperture usually provided with a lens through which light from
external objects enters to form an inverted image of the objects
on the opposite surface.
At the Aldrich, the camera obscura is an entire room into which
visitors must enter and then wait approximately two minutes for
their eyes to adjust. The lens is on the west-facing wall of the
room, and visitors are rewarded with an image of the exterior
objects on the wall to the right of the doorway from which they
have entered. As their eyes adjust more, the movements of passing
cars and even pedestrians can be picked up.
If visitors look to their left before entering the camera obscura
room (or to their right as they exit), they will take in another
work of art: Mary Lum's "Interchange." Lum worked with students
in the most recent course of Art Lab, a high school art program,
to create an installation that has been mounted on the east side
of Old Hundred.
The work, called "Interchange," focuses on the site of the museum
as a place of old and new experiences.
Through September 1, the museum is also presenting "Into My
World: Recent British Sculpture," with work by nine emerging and
midcareer British artists: Laura Ford, Matt Franks, Roger Hiorns,
James Ireland, Jim Lambie, Mike Nelson, Mariele Neudecker, David
Thorpe and Saskia Olde Wolbers.
Ann Lislegaard's "Passing By," a new sound project, is
inaugurating the museum's new dedicated sound gallery.
On the main floor, the Leir Gallery is hosting "The Drawn Page,"
new works on paper by 26 artists.
Also on the main floor, Sol LeWitt's "Wall Drawing #1123, Planes
with broken bands of color" inaugurates the museum's new
two-story Project Gallery. The site-specific work covers the
1,800 square feet of the space's south, west and north walls,
leaving the east wall empty and establishing a specific vantage
point for viewing the entire work.
The three-acre site now includes the two-acre Cornish Family
Sculpture Garden, a gently sloping space that will be used for
changing exhibitions of sculpture.
Current outdoor projects include Jon Conner's "Self-Sufficient
Barnyard," a collection of 42 carved Styrofoam animals that is on
the museum's front lawn; Jason Middlebrook's "The Beginning of
the End," a work based on Robert Indiana's iconic "Love" series;
and the return of Nina Levy's "Big Baby," a 7-foot-tall sculpture
that had been on the front lawn during the museum's renovations.
Finally, the museum is now fully handicapped accessible.
"We finally have an elevator," said Harry Philbrick, "and we're
really pleased to finally be up to date" in keeping handicapped
visitors comfortable and having all of the museum's galleries and
amenities accessible.
When it opened four decades ago The Aldrich Museum of
Contemporary Art was one of the first museums in the country
devoted solely to the exhibition of contemporary art. The dream
of the late Larry Aldrich, who founded the museum in 1964,
remains the focus of today's staff: The museum's mission has
always been to serve as a national leader in the exhibition of
contemporary art and to be an innovator in museum education.
The Aldrich continues to be a noncollecting museum; it is more
concerned with temporary presentations of the latest art than
building a permanent collection. Such a collection would only
move from being contemporary to classic in the fast-moving world
of modern art.
The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, at 258 Main Street in
Ridgefield, can be reached at 203-438-4519 or
www.AldrichArt.org.
