Theaster Gates, Monument in Waiting, 2020
Gray is pleased to announce that works in sculpture and installation by Theaster Gates, Jaume Plensa and Jim Dine will debut in Field of Dreams, the Parrish Art Museum’s inaugural sculpture exhibition. The extensive outdoor installation, which responds to the landscape and architecture of the museum’s 14-acre grounds in Water Mill, New York, opens August 20, 2020, featuring ten artists of international renown.
“Our meadow has been patiently waiting for this opportunity to become a true extension of the museum, allowing the Parrish to fulfill its responsibility to provide an opportunity to interact with art during the pandemic that is safe, socially distant, and rich with potent and timely meaning,” said Parrish Board President Mary E. Frank. “Field of Dreams is a space to conjure the carefree days of summers past or to dream of what the future might hold.”
Presented in the museum’s Great Meadow, Theaster Gates debuts his latest outdoor work, Monument in Waiting. Gates’s timely installation responds to the current political moment and public reckoning of historical figures and monuments. Comprised of repurposed stone plinths placed upon a large granite plaza, Monument in Waiting evokes the very sites being scrutinized today. An inscription engraved on one of the plinths reads, “Until real heroes bloom, this dusty plinth will wait.” This tribute, like much of Gates’s work, asks viewers to reconsider the traditional narratives that have been upheld and celebrated over others. Monument in Waiting is the second public sculpture to ever be exhibited by the artist.
Field of Dreams is part of the Art in the Meadow initiative created to activate the Parrish Art Museum’s outdoor spaces with performances, screenings, and sculpture.