Fritz Haeg
Something for Everyone
June 27, 2010, to January 2, 2011
Something for Everyone, Haeg’s exhibition at The Aldrich, includes five projects. One is an Edible Estate on the front lawn of the Museum that is being tended by the staff. For the artist, the ultimate goal of a garden like this is to activate the front lawn as a social space, where the gardeners interact with the passersby while creating new relationships with the environment and the plants and animals.
Reconnecting people with people, and people with plants and animals, is at the core of all the projects in this exhibition. The Animal Estate at The Aldrich consists of a series of homes designed specifically for the flying squirrels that lost their habitat when the Museum’s large ash tree died and was removed from the Sculpture Garden.
Through the Sundown Salon, where a local resident/family will on September 5 relocate their living room furniture to The Aldrich’s atrium, and then organize and host a series of salon gatherings at their home; the Sundown Schoolhouse, where a series of intimate workshops and classes will take place in a geodesic tent on the Museum's front lawn; and the Dancing Boardwalk, which facilitates the exploration of movement, direction, and gesture on a low wood platform installed in the rear Sculpture Garden, Haeg is creating simple structures that encourage meaningful human activity and social exchanges.
All these projects are integrated into the existing landscape and architecture of the Museum with very simple and inexpensive materials, mainly wood. However, the human, animal, and plant activity around them is highly complex. These projects are meant as models that inform our vision for a more sustainable, interconnected, and grounded future. They are models that anyone can implement at home with modest means—starting simply in their own front yard.
-Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, curator
Fritz Haeg, Dancing Boardwalk, 2010
Installation view at The Aldrich
