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October 31, 2024 to March 16, 2025 | Leir Gallery, Klein Kenealy Gallery, Project Space, Sculpture Garden

A Garden of Promise and Dissent

October 31, 2024 to March 16, 2025 (Galleries)
November 17, 2024 to April 12, 2026 (Grounds)

A Garden of Promise and Dissent inaugurates The Aldrich’s newly renovated campus and Sculpture Garden. This intergenerational group exhibition of twenty-one artists explores the animation of the “garden” as a site of private expression (poetics) and public action (praxis). Gardens offer solace, community, nutrition, and well-being; they provide safe spaces for rebellion and empowerment; they alleviate climate change, revitalize, and widen access to land use–providing localized food resources and alternative medicine. Gardens symbolize growth, death, and regeneration as well as represent care, resilience, and hope. Gardens can be highly ordered and aestheticized or anarchic indicators of aspiration and failure. The artists in this exhibition radicalize the garden as a theme to tackle moral, social, economic, and ecological afflictions that trouble our planet. Spanning the galleries and grounds, works will be sited within the natural world and against the built environment, unsettling the gulf that exists between the two.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue.

Artists participating in the exhibition include Terry Adkins, Kelly Akashi, Teresa Baker, Alina Bliumis, Carolina Caycedo, Carl Cheng, Rachelle Dang, Anders Hamilton, Maren Hassinger, Hugh Hayden, Max Hooper Schneider, Athena LaTocha, Gracelee Lawrence, Cathy Lu, Jill Magid, Suchitra Mattai, Mary Mattingly, Brandon Ndife, Meg Webster, Faith Wilding, and Rachel Youn.

A Garden of Promise and Dissent is curated by Amy Smith-Stewart, Chief Curator.

Artworks

Installation view displaying multiple sculptures in an art gallery
Exterior view of a sculpture garden displaying a sculpture of a palm tree and a sculpture of a bush made of wire rope.
a sculpture of a cage-like box which is constructed of metal and painted white
An exterior view of a garden displaying a shroud sculpture in the foreground.
A museum gallery with various artworks relating to the theme of garden on display
Installation view of a solar room with various plants and vegetables planted together.
an arrangement of ceramics, stones, and wood pieces displayed on 4 shelves
a curtain made of colorful glass and steel beads installed on a branch of a tree
Installation image of an art gallery displaying multiple kinetic sculptures.

Map of Grounds

map of a sculpture garden

El Mapa en Espanol

All works h x w x d in inches unless otherwise noted.

1) Moko Fukuyama, Menagerie, 2024
Fallen timber, acrylic urethane paint, epoxy resin, inkjet print on photo paper, and steel
Courtesy of the artist

2) Gracelee Lawrence, Emotional Weather Forecast, 2022
Glass beads, stainless steel beads, stainless steel cable, and aluminum
Courtesy of the artist

3) Maren Hassinger, Garden, 2020
Concrete and wire rope
Courtesy of the artist and Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC

4) Anders Hamilton, Obelisk (Anew), 2024
Cremated morning glory, rare earth elements, ceramic, resin, steel, acrylic, and maple
Courtesy of the artist

5) Brandon Ndife, Shade Tree, 2022/2024
Polyurethane, resin, and metal hardware
Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

6) Maren Hassinger, Bushes, 2021
Wire rope
Courtesy of the artist and Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC

7) Gracelee Lawrence, Triecious Flowers Wilt and Bloom Just Like the Rest of Us, 2022
Glass beads, stainless steel beads, stainless steel cable, hardware
Courtesy of the artist

8) Mary Mattingly, Water Body, Water Time, 2024
Steel conduit, biochar and limestone pouring bowls, ceramic, driftwood, charred wood,
medical tubing and trays, and water from the headwaters of nine rivers in Ridgefield
Courtesy of the artist and Robert Mann Gallery

9) Rachel Youn, Parade Paradis, 2022
Artificial palm head, steel, coconuts, coconut bark, and motor
Courtesy of the artist and Sargent’s Daughters

10) Rachelle Dang, Chorus, 2023
Aluminum and Imron automotive paint
Commissioned by Lighthouse Works for Fishers Island, New York
Courtesy Someday, New York

11) Kelly Akashi, Heirloom, 2022
Lost-wax cast and wire-brushed bronze
Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery

12) Gracelee Lawrence, Perceived Happiness as the Ultimate Revenge, 2019
Fiberglass, epoxy resin, foam, 3D printed plastic, epoxy putty, auto paint, tubes, fountain pumps, steel, and concrete
Courtesy of the artist

Audio

Hear artist Alina Bliumis talk about her "Plant Parenthood" series, 2023.

Hear artist Rachelle Dang talk about her work Chorus, 2023.

Hear artist Rachelle Dang talk about her work Seedling Carrier, 2019.

Hear artist Anders Hamilton talk about his work Obelisk (Anew), 2024.

Hear artist Anders Hamilton talk about his work Obelisk (Xeric), 2024.

Hear artist Maren Hassinger talk about her work Garden, 2020, and Bushes, 2021.

Hear artist Mary Mattingly talk about her work Poems for Plants, Emily Dickinson 1, 2023.

Hear artist Mary Mattingly talk about her work Water Body, Water Time, 2024.

Links

Press Release

Press

“Featuring works by 21 artists who range in age from 30 to 82 and offer intriguingly disparate takes on nature and our relationship to it, the exhibition will cross the indoor-outdoor divide.”
—Robb Report
“Because so much of what I think about in my work is that the digital and the physical have essentially equal presence and importance in most people's daily lives. So, we spend a huge amount of time in those spaces, and I think they need to be treated like spaces we're visiting rather than as secondary concerns. - Artist Gracelee Lawrence”
—WSHU
“The exhibition succeeds in presenting gardens as deeply contested spaces where human ambition meets natural law. Through diverse media and perspectives, these artists reveal how our relationship with nature mirrors broader social dynamics, particularly gender politics and environmental exploitation. From LaTocha’s metallic impositions to Lu’s devotional forms, from Lawrence’s hybrid figure to Dang’s hothouse critique, A Garden of Promise and Dissent fosters a rich colloquy about power, care, and resistance. In doing so, the show fills a critical lacuna in our understanding of gardens, revealing them not simply as ornamental spaces but as living laboratories where we experiment with tradition and progress, control and surrender, destruction and renewal.”
—Hyperallergic
“Gardens have been sites for the display of immense power over the earth, as in Louis XIV’s Versailles, but they have also provided spaces for resistance, as in the subsistence gardens enslaved peoples cultivated in the American South. Titled 'A Garden of Promise and Dissent,' the exhibition at the Aldrich deliberately engages this wide range of garden histories.”
—Art in America

Funders

Major support for A Garden of Promise and Dissent is provided by The Aldrich Council. Generous support is provided by Diana Bowes and Jim Torrey, Michael P. and Linda M. Dugan, and the Further Forward Foundation. Significant support is provided by The Cowles Charitable Trust, Kristina and Philip Larson, and Julie Phillips. The catalogue is supported by the Eric Diefenbach and James Keith Brown Publications Fund. Preferred Art Logistics Provider: Crozier Fine Arts.

Related Products

Moss green square book cover with "A Garden of Promise and Dissent" in black typeface centered

A Garden of Promise and Dissent Catalogue

Related Exhibitions

Top image: A Garden of Promise and Dissent (installation view), The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, October 31, 2024 to March 16, 2025. Photo: Jeffrey Jenkins Projects