Circumstance

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum to open Circumstance exhibitions by Poundstone, Shaver, Stiler, Umbrico, Uras, and Wurtz

During the new spring exhibition series, Circumstance, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum will become a maze where cultural hierarchies are intentionally obscured, and craft, historical design, and everyday objects sit beside works of art, demonstrating how artists take inspiration from their surroundings.

From May 3 through October 25, artists Virginia Poundstone, Nancy Shaver, Ruby Sky Stiler, Penelope Umbrico, Elif Uras, and B. Wurtz will reveal never-before-seen aspects of their practice after having taken center stage in the development, conceptualization, and presentation of their work.

The Circumstance suite of exhibitions—organized by exhibitions director Richard Klein and curator Amy Smith-Stewart—will highlight inspiration and its influence across object-making, underscoring the intersection of installation art and exhibition design, and showing how the convergence of fine art, design, and non-art objects within the exhibition format informs creative expression.

The galleries will be transformed into "rooms" designed by the artists, where they will show their own work alongside artworks by other artists they have selected or objects of their choosing, offering interconnected narratives about the works of art and their makers, and confronting us with larger questions about history, culture, and society.

This series of exhibitions captures the ethos of Museum founder Larry Aldrich, a proponent of living with "new art," who stated in a 1961 Art in America article, "I wonder if many more people might not find it easier to respond and relate to art if they could see it in a more 'lived-in' atmosphere than the high-ceilinged, large-display areas which exist in most museums."