Judith Barry Installs New Work on the Façade of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Judith Barry installs new work on the façade of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

BOSTON, MASS.- For her in- acts like a beacon, drawing your sented as part of a citywide part- stallation on the Isabella Stew- eyes upward as you approach nership of arts and educational art Gardner Museum’s Anne H. the Museum from a distance, institutions organized to recog- Fitzpatrick Façade, American especially at night when it’s illu- nize the outsized role greater born artist Judith Barry explored minated. Boston has played in the history hundreds of drone images cir- and development of technology. culating the internet that depict Barry, an artist and writer, works The Institute of Contemporary people fleeing their homes and across multiple mediums. She Art/Boston has initiated this seeking a new life elsewhere. utilizes a research-based methodol- partnership to link concurrent ex- Her installation, untitled: (Global ogy to explore wide range of topics. hibitions and programs related to Displacement: nearly 1 in 100 Both the form and the content of the themes of the exhibition Art people worldwide are displaced her work evolve as the research in the Age of the Internet, 1989 from their homes , is a collage of proceeds. She often makes use of to Today, on view at the ICA from asylum seekers from around the installation, in various forms, as a February 7 – May 20, 2018. world in an inflatable boat and is way to combine many of her dis- on view beginning Jan. 17. parate interests. These immersive environments are based on exper- “These images shot by drones iments incorporating architecture, are poignant reminders of the sculpture, performance, theatre, trust and hope that, even in the film/video/new media, graphics, most dire circumstances, abiding and interactivity. human qualities remain,” Barry says. “Looking up, these asylum Barry’s art encompasses film, seekers greet the effortlessly performance, installation, sculp- hovering drone with a mixture of ture, architecture, photography, relief and elation – even though and new media, and has been the drone is unmanned and not featured internationally at ven- human, and even though the ues such as the Berlin Bien- resulting encounter is no guar- nale, Venice Biennale, Sydney antee of a rescue or of entry into Biennale, and Documenta. She another country.” received the Kiesler Prize for Ar- chitecture and the Arts in 2000, “There are hundreds of these was honored with “Best Pavilion” images circulating on-line,” says at the Cairo Biennale in 2001, Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of and was awarded a Guggenheim Contemporary Art. “The refugee Fellowship in 2011. Barry has crisis is on-going and shows no held full-time teaching positions sign of abating. For so many of at numerous institutions, includ- these people, there is still no ing Merz Akademie, Stuttgart, place that will welcome them. Germany, and has been until The crisis exists in this country, recently Professor/Director of as well, as we witness the count- the MFA Visual Arts Program less natural disasters displacing at LUCAD in Cambridge, Mass. residents from their homes.” Currently, Barry is Professor/ Director in the ACT Program at In thinking about a façade proj- MIT, Cambridge, MA. ect for the Gardner Museum, the artist was struck by its shape. Untitled (Global Displacement: The rectangular outdoor work Nearly 1 in 100 people…) is pre-