Aldrich Experiences Auction

Digging with Dion!

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Mark Dion, conducting an archeological dig on your property, and then creating a small artwork from one of his discoveries. If you are fascinated about what the past can tell us about the present, this is the Experience for you!  After conducting digs in the Thames and at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Dion will unearth some fascinating facts about your corner of the globe.  Then, just as he did at the Tate and MoMA, he will use one of his finds as the basis for an artwork he will create just for you, enabling objects to travel full circle, from being once useful things to becoming trash to treasure to artwork. .

In 2000, MoMA converted The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden into a construction staging area for the most extensive renovation and expansion project in its 75-year history. During the process, Dion was invited to create a projects exhibition based on a series of archaeological excavations of the garden and surrounding areas. Conceived as an installation about the Museum’s foundations, Projects 82: Mark Dion—Rescue Archaeology, A Project for The Museum of Modern Art, consisted of Dion's findings, which included architectural cornices, moldings, shards of ceramic, wallpaper samples, and sections of fireplace mantels.

As part of the Tate Modern's pre-opening program in 1999, Dion and a team of volunteers combed the foreshore of the Thames in front of the museum, finding items ranging from clay pipes, oyster shells and cattle teeth to plastic toys and old shoes are now housed in a double-sided mahogany chest, in the style of an old “cabinet of curiosities.”   Loosely organized according to type, antiques sit alongside contemporary objects, lost treasures next to ephemera or junk.  Dion encourages viewers to create their own imaginative and poetic associations.

Dion received the 2001 Larry Aldrich Award; his exhibition Mark Dion: Full House was on view at the Museum in 2003 and Memento Mori (My Glass is Run), graced the Sculpture Garden in 2005.

(Date to be mutually agreed upon.)