Mildred’s Lane Renovating Walden: J.Morgan Puett and Mark Dion
ORGANIZER Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, Massachusetts
DATES September 6 – November 13, 2010
DESCRIPTION Mark Dion and J. Morgan Puett, who work collaboratively, realized for the Tufts University Art Gallery their long-held dream to “renovate Walden.” Located 20 miles from the historic site, Tufts University was the ideal locus for this project that drew on the artists’ engagement with innovative models of education, community and sustainability. The artists conceived the gallery space as a center for exchange and dialogue around a replica of Thoreau’s cabin. A semester-long interdisciplinary series of seminars and classes that examined issues related to Thoreau’s ideas were held in the gallery. All pertinent departments across the University collaborated: literature, philosophy, education, architectural history, environmental sciences, economics, etc. The process and project were embedded in the curriculum of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, affiliated with Tufts University, and the public was welcomed to share and make transparent the intellectual activity and capital of the University.
CATALOGUE Conceived as an artist’s book, this limited edition publication designed by Jeffrey Jenkins, includes essays by the curators, the artists, Rebecca Kneale Gould and David F. Wood. The voices of Tufts facultys from several of the disciplines collaborating in the project are included: Elizabeth Ammons, Avner Baz and
Gilbert Metcalf.
