- We’re open today from 12 pm to 5 pm
- Purchase tickets
- Join mailing list
- Join as a member
- Donate
Inaugurated in 2021, the Aldrich Box is a year-long traveling exhibition unbound to a physical space. This year’s edition will focus on performance—underscoring the cooperative and interdisciplinary aspects of making art. A collaboration between the Museum’s Curatorial and Education departments, Director of Education Namulen Bayarsaihan and Chief Curator Amy Smith-Stewart have invited dancer and choreographer Ali Kenner Brodsky, musician, composer, and artist Laura Ortman, and the feminist artist collective Hilma’s Ghost (founded by artists and educators Dannielle Tegeder and Sharmistha Ray) to create work(s) contained inside individualized Aldrich Boxes and accompanied by a live performance to be presented inside the Museum. The Aldrich Boxes will be released on a rolling basis from December 18, 2022 through March 3, 2024, and the public will be invited to borrow one for up to a week. An Aldrich Box will be on view inside the Museum’s Leir Atrium throughout the project’s duration. There is no cost to borrow an Aldrich Box.
Reserve an Ali Kenner Brodsky Aldrich Box
Photo: Gloria Perez
Reserve Hilma's Ghost's Aldrich Box Here
Reservations available December 3, 2023 through March 3, 2024
For the Aldrich Box series Hilma’s Ghost created an apothecary box imbued with magick. The box contains 12 bottles. Within these bottles lie the eternal power of the divine feminine. Each bottle is designed as a spell jar and is dedicated to a deity, saint, or an artist and includes a collection of ephemera. Each of these items carry associations with the female personages they represent. When paired with the activations –an invocation, a ritual, and an incantation –the attributes associated with each start to manifest.
An instructional manual is included as a guide. Each of the 12 descriptions are accompanied by a list of attributes, ritual objects, brief historical information, and an incantation on offer to activate.
Learn more about Hilma's Ghost's Aldrich Box here.
Register for the Feminist Salon hosted by Hilma's Ghost on Saturday, December 2 here.
On view in the Museum September 20, 2023 to March 3, 2024
Reserve Laura Ortman's Aldrich Box Here
The second edition of the 2023 Aldrich Box is created by musician, composer, and artist Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache).
Ortman’s Aldrich Box is comprised of a selection of violins from her personal collection. Transformed into vessels, each contain a customized book of her improvisations into written musical notation. The music in these books is transcribed from Ortman's vast discography of live performances of amplified violin.
In conjunction with the Aldrich Box: Transonic Homes, the Museum
presented a live solo performance by Ortman at The Aldrich on Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 6:30 pm.
Saturday, January 21 | 7 to 8 pm
moments is a multifaceted performance piece of dance, music, and art that has been in development for the past five years. An evening-length dance-theatre work, moments, explores memory, loss, and love. Unfolding through subtle gestural movement and emotionally evocative music moments evokes memories of past relationships, the longing for a closeness once felt, and the challenge of how to move forward through grief. Through a collection of embodied vignettes, moments breaks the stigma around grief by giving audiences a moment to be present to their individual experiences of loss.
Performed by Ali Kenner Brodsky, Scott McPheeters, Jenna Pollack, Jessi Stegall, and Ilya Vidrin with costume design by Hertling and fiber artist Alex Davis, live and recorded music by MorganEve Swain, graphics by Cyrus Highsmith, and set design by Keri King, moments surveys themes of devotion, remembrance, passing, and grief.
moments is the first live performance installment of the Aldrich Box, a year-long traveling exhibition.
The performance, moments, is presented in partnership with The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfield University.
Saturday, September 23 | 6:30 pm
Transonic Homes was a solo violin performance by musician, composer, and collaborator Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache).
Ortman describes the performance, “from the rosined-out beast of tough stained violin emerges deranged crumpled wings twirling in starlight and oil slickness and shininess; bearing heavy use of amplification and effects, she also incorporates over-rosining to add smoke, dust, wind and slow-motion grittiness in her scored / improvised compositions for amplified violin, Apache violin, whistles, tree branches, slides, guitar picks, bells, field recordings, and tuning fork.”
Transonic Homes is the second live performance installment of the Aldrich Box, a year-long traveling exhibition.