The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

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Important Update

Plan your visit!

December 18, 2022 to December 31, 2023 |

Aldrich Box

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 December 31, 2023, 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.

Reserve an Aldrich Box

Ali Kenner Brodsky: creating moments

Introduction

Video: Rich Ferri

Artist introduction, media, and more about creating moments here

Reserve Ali Kenner Brodsky's Aldrich Box

Coming Soon | Laura Ortman: Transonic Homes

Artist Laura Ortman playing the violin in front of a body of water at dusk

Laura Ortman, My Soul Remainer, 2017, (video still). TIME BASED MEDIA. Baltimore Museum of Art, Purchase with exchange funds from the Pearlstone Family Fund and partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

On view June 4 to December 31, 2023

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 will present a live solo performance by Ortman at The Aldrich on Saturday, September 23rd at 6:30pm. Learn more here.

Past Related Performances

Ali Kenner Brodsky, moments

Dancers in an embrace
Dancer in motion
Two dancers with arms outstretched
Dancer looking at hands
Two dancers embracing with one's arms outstretched to the sky
Two dancers in motion

Dance Performance | Ali Kenner Brodsky: moments

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.

Links

Press Release - Ali Kenner Brodsky

Press

“The Aldrich Box was modeled after the Fluxus boxes and Duchamp’s ‘Box in a Valise,’ which were built to be performative, intended to be interactive, and emphasized accessibility,” Smith-Stewart said. “The idea to make performance and collaboration this edition’s theme underscores this dynamic interplay between art/artist(s) and public/private audience(s), creating personal and collective experiences within and outside the boundaries/confines of the museum/home.”
—Connecticut Post

Related Events

Artist Laura Ortman playing the violin in front of a body of water at dusk
September 23, 2023 | Public Programs

Musical Performance: Transonic Homes

The second live performance installment of the Aldrich Box, a year-long traveling exhibition, is Transonic Homes, a solo musical performance by musician, composer, and collaborator Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache).

The performance will take place outdoors in the Museum’s Sculpture Garden on Saturday, September 23rd at 7pm, weather permitting.

Top image: Aldrich Box 2023: Ali Kenner Brodsky, creating moments. Photo: Christopher E. Manning