Following a multi-million dollar refurbishment, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut—about an hour and a half north of New York City—has unveiled an updated, fully accessible three-acre campus that adds approximately 50 percent more outdoor exhibition space. Observer spoke with director Cybele Maylone on the occasion of the reveal to learn more about what we can expect from this new space and how it will integrate with the museum’s programming.
Since its founding, the Aldrich has positioned its Sculpture garden as a way to expand its reach and engage the local community and weekend visitors, capitalizing on its unique relationship with the land and its location. This renovation extends the museum’s legacy of exhibiting works in nature since 1964 and responds to the growing demand for outdoor experiences, especially post-COVID.
“This ability to be with art in nature was just part of this foundational vision for the museum about how to make contemporary art accessible to the broadest possible audience,” Maylone said. The importance of the garden became especially clear during the pandemic when the museum safely showcased works by artists like Nari Ward, Radcliffe Bailey and Tom Friedman. The museum extended these loans, recognizing how much the community valued the outdoor space. “We saw that people were coming to find solace and inspiration in the sculpture garden. We were really blown away by how much people were seeking out this space. However, with this sudden dramatic influx of visitors we realized also how limited the site was.”
The new influx of visitors highlighted the sculpture park’s limitations related to accessibility, as the sculpture garden was at the time reachable only via a flight of stairs. Now, the renovation has introduced a fully accessible route from Main Street through the Sculpture Garden and a new amphitheater along with more than 100 new trees and native plants.
In celebration of the reopening, the museum is presenting a group exhibition, “A Garden of Promise and Dissent,” featuring an intergenerational roster of twenty-one artists, including Terry Adkins, Kelly Akashi, Teresa Baker, Carolina Caycedo, Hugh Hayden and Suchitra Mattai, who explore gardens as symbols of imaginative discourse and protest. The show examines the concept of a “garden” as both a site of private expression (poetics) and public action (praxis) while also serving as a space for solace, community, sustenance and well-being—a safe haven for rebellion and empowerment, and a platform to advocate for land access in response to climate change. Extending from the indoor galleries to the open air, the exhibition radicalizes the garden as a thematic foundation to confront moral, social, economic and ecological challenges through works that seek a dialogue with their natural surroundings.
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“We wanted to design a space that would allow us to present works at various scales,” said Maylone. “It was challenging to showcase pieces at a human scale when they had to compete with the sky and towering 25-foot trees.” To address this, the sculpture garden includes more intimate alcove areas, such as the pollinator walkway and a “secret garden,” providing settings where sculptures won’t be overshadowed by the expansive landscape. While these works will mostly be temporary—the Aldrich deaccessioned its collection some time ago—the museum will rotate the art in these spaces through loans and commissions that foster the production and circulation of ambitious contemporary works.
Aldrich remains committed to maintaining a seamless integration between its indoor and outdoor spaces. “We’ve often presented exhibitions where works could be experienced both in the galleries and out en plein air,” Maylone elaborated. “I think that’s one of the unique aspects of the museum—we have this interplay between indoors and outdoors to showcase the full range of an artist’s practice. We will continue to create programs that foster a dialogue between the galleries inside and the spaces outside, as it’s something truly special to the Aldrich.”
The renovation should, according to the director, create a more intimate experience with the outdoor sculptures—something that’s important, given that they have a significant local audience of family visitors. “They appreciate how this is a lower-pressure way to have encounters with contemporary art,” she said.
The extensive renovation was made possible by the generous support of the museum’s patrons and donors, plus two substantial gifts from Connecticut’s government, which recognized the institution’s cultural significance in the region. Maylone, who brought a background in fundraising and administration to her role, explained that growing the institution’s donor community was an important part of the project. “I had significant time to lay some strong groundwork, so by the time we began fundraising two years ago, the museum had an established community of donors, and we’d also expanded our network of supporters and our board.”
Thinking forward, she believes the garden’s refurbishment will inspire further transformation. “I think there is going to be a great learning curve for all of us related to what the immediate future of the museum looks like,” she said. “We understand this is a major change, and there will be a lot to learn as we find the best ways to serve artists and the public in this new environment.”
Maylone further referenced the museum’s recent focus on extending its exhibitions and projects, facilitating their travel to other institutions as a strategy to support artists’ careers and participate in more institutional collaboration. “We’ve been in testing mode,” she said, “but I think we want to prioritize it in the next year.”
“A Garden of Promise and Dissent” will be on view through March 16 in the galleries and through November of 2025 in the sculpture garden.
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