Chad Kleitsch: White Box—Photographs of the Unseen Museum
January 31 to March 14, 2010
The public seldom gets behind the scenes to view artworks submerged in packing peanuts, propped against gallery walls, and wrapped in blankets inside large empty galleries.
The exhibition Chad Kleitsch: White Box—Photographs of the Unseen Museum invites visitors to The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum to experience “show change,” an industry term for the intense and exciting period of time from the point when artworks arrive on site—sometimes following transatlantic voyages—to the time an exhibition is ready to make its public debut.
Working in various capacities in art museums over the years, Chad Kleitsch has experienced this hidden side of the institutional space. In 2001 he began to ask museums for open access with his camera during exhibition changes, initiating a project that has now encompassed over fourteen museums and nonprofit exhibition spaces, including The Aldrich, The Menil Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art, and The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Through the camera lens, visitors are afforded a glimpse of what happens out of sight and are invited to reconsider the objects in unusual situations. According to Richard Klein, Aldrich exhibitions director, “Kleitsch’s photographs often exhibit a deadpan humor, reveling in the accidental juxtapositions that occur outside the public’s view.”
The photographs reveal the complex relationship between art and the space in which it is presented, lifting a curtain on a provisional environment where institutional hierarchy is missing or turned upside down, where the division between art and the circumstances of its presentation is blurred, and where the installation processes themselves are aestheticized.
The Aldrich will celebrate the opening of Chad Kleitsch: White Box—Photographs of the Unseen Museum on Sunday, January 31, 2010, from 3 to 5 pm. FREE on-site parking is available, as is continuous round-trip transportation from the Metro North Katonah Train Station to the Museum. Patrons are invited to join exhibitions director Richard Klein and artist Chad Kleitsch during the installation period for a revealing discussion about his fascinating photographs and the show change process on Sunday, January 24, from 2 to 3 pm.
The Aldrich is supported, in part, by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The official media sponsors of exhibition openings are Ridgefield Magazine and WSHU Public Radio.
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Chad Kleitsch: White Box—Photographs of the Unseen Museum
Chad Kleitsch, Untitled #24 (Painting on Floor), 2002
Courtesy of the artist
Chad Kleitsch: White Box—Photographs of the Unseen Museum
Chad Kleitsch, Untitled #50 (Hostage), 2003
Courtesy of the artist
Chad Kleitsch: White Box—Photographs of the Unseen Museum
Chad Kleitsch, Untitled #97 (Monitor Cart), 2005
Courtesy of the artist
The Artist: Born and raised in New Jersey, Kleitsch earned his BA in Photography from Bard College in 1991. He has had solo exhibitions at the Ariel Meyerowitz Gallery, New York, which represents the artist; and Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY. Group exhibitions include those at the Art Institute of Chicago; Yancy Richardson Gallery New York; Samuel Dorsky Museum, New Paltz, NY; Woodstock Center for Photography, NY; Wendy Cooper Gallery, Madison, WI; Margaret Bodell Gallery, New York; and Kanazawa College of Art, International Art Exhibition, Japan. Kleitsch is the recipient of a 1993 Merchant & Ivory Grant, has lectured at Yale University and Sarah Lawrence College, and has taught at Bard, Columbia Green College, and La Guardia College. His work has been featured in Hearts and Hands, by Jonathan King; Weird U.S.; Bystander: A History Of Street Photography, by Joel Meyerowitz; and reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time Out, Albany Times Union, and Fortune magazine.
Chad Kleitsch, Untitled #24 (Painting on Floor), 2002
Courtesy of the artist
