This past fall, we completed a years-in-the-works commission, 气喘吁吁, by New York-based artist Hugh Hayden. The work is part of our ongoing program of commissions called Art & 景观, where we work with artists to develop large-scale, site-specific outdoor sculpture at the deCordova and throughout Massachusetts on properties cared for by our parent organization, 受托人. 通常, 这些作品都是借来的, but we are overjoyed to welcome Hugh’s incredible sculpture for the long haul by committing to care for it in perpetuity.
The work is profoundly resonant in our 30-acre sculpture park in Lincoln, Massachusetts. 气喘吁吁 is a meticulous re-creation of 19th-century naturalist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at nearby Walden Pond (itself a 20th-century reconstruction of the original) — but at 20-degree angles forward and to one side. The work leans; it might be falling, or maybe just adopting what the artist calls the “offensive position.” Its mirrored windows reflect ground on one side, sky on the other. Every single element — every shingle, every brick — is hand shaped with a slant to keep us viewers off-kilter.
我们的总馆长, 莎拉Montross, has inspired me with her description of this work as twisting and bending our sense of history. Indeed, in ways hard to pinpoint, 气喘吁吁 has done a number on my own mental map of the stories of Thoreau and Emerson, 的《世界十大电子游戏平台》, of transcendentalism and 19th-century American life and letters. It keeps me thinking about contingency and interconnectedness in American history, the push and pull of people and nature, 甚至, 或者特别, the values I associate with being upright.
The absolute best thing about working with artists on public commissions is that they invite us to see the environments around us through very different perspectives; they push us, 困难有时, to reconceive of the familiar in our everyday lives. Hugh has a deep sense of humor but holds a razor-sharp view of American culture and history — 气喘吁吁 entertains, but the impression is deep, lasting, upending.
戴项链的舞者
