We are excited to share with our readers a new project launching this year that will be a confluence of various initiatives we have prioritized for Planting Fields. As we endeavor to look closer at the Coe family and the defining characteristics that they imparted onto Planting Fields, we look at their embrace of arts patronage, an often-overlooked activity of Mai and W.R. Coe. Some of the leading designers and artists were engaged for site-specific work at Planting Fields at the time of its making and we are continuing the legacy of patronage by engaging living artists with the site today. While our mission to preserve underpins all aspects of our work here, we also want to ensure a strong sense of cultural vitality that brings fresh perspective and relevance to Planting Fields.
Mark Dion and David Brooks (pictured above) have been selected to be the inaugural artists of our new annual commission program. Both Dion and Brooks are artists that have focused their artistic output on working with historic sites and collections resulting in a multitude of work produced for the public realm. Mark Dion has had major exhibitions at Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York, dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel, Germany, MoMA PS1 in New York City, ICA Boston, British Museum of Natural History in London, Guggenheim Bilbao and the Tate Gallery in London and his work can be found in the collections of MoMA, Tate Gallery, Carnegie Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou and Seattle Art Museum. David Brooks has exhibited his work at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut, Nouveau Musée Nacional de Monaco, MoMA PS1 in New York City, Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami, Florida and has had major commissions from The Trust for Governors Island, Storm King Art Center and deCordova Museum, Massachusetts.
The work of both artists has looked at how the natural world is interpreted, organized, presented and preserved from the standpoint of humans which make them a natural fit to consider the melding of the built and natural world presented at Planting Fields. Over the course of last year Dion and Brooks have made site visits to Planting Fields, getting immersed in the rich social and architectural history and familiarizing themselves with the stellar plant and art collections. Each artist is developing an installation to be sited near the Bird Sanctuary in a project entitled The Great Bird Blind Debate. As this is a new initiative, Planting Fields Foundation and New York State have been working closely on the planning and execution of an unprecedented, site-specific initiative that we look forward to sharing with you all in a few months.
A key objective of this exhibition is for the artists to deeply engage with the site and use it as a point of departure for newly created work. Just like the Coes invited Robert Winthrop Chanler to create the Buffalo Mural and Mai Coe’s Lace Room, Everett Shinn to create panels and painted furniture for the Tea House and Mai’s dressing room and Samuel Yellin to strike the hammer to the anvil for much of the hand-wrought iron work throughout the house and grounds, we too see the immense value in providing an entry point to Planting Fields through the lens of a living artist.
A truly collaborative initiative between Planting Fields Foundation and NYS, this exhibition will apply an interdisciplinary approach involving visual arts, horticulture, museology, ornithology, landscape design, and environmental studies in thinking about the sustainability of Planting Fields. We hope you will join us for the opening reception on Saturday, May 16.