Exhibition Guide to Maren Hassinger: Monuments

Maren Hassinger

Monuments Exhibition Guide

Maren Hassinger: Monuments features eight sculptures throughout Marcus Garvey Park. The sculptures are created with branches and mirror the surrounding environment—a sculpture of a cube echoes the shape of a nearby chess table and a rectangular sculpture takes its shape from a nearby flowerbed.

Monuments transforms the space of Marcus Garvey Park to invite the audience to think about the place that nature has in their lives. Each of the eight sculptures provides a thoughtful moment, one that invites a variety of responses that call forth different memories for those who experience them.

A group of volunteers, including youth and adults, from Harlem helped to assemble each of the works. Together, these sculptures honor the physical and social achievements of the community, and celebrate the possibilities of humans working together in a natural setting.

Maren Hassinger (b. 1947) is a Harlembased artist whose work—spanning performance, installation, sculpture, and video—often engages nature and community. She considers the natural world a site of hope and potential, a place of equality, where we all have a shared purpose of caring for and understanding the environment.

Key Terms Community

Landscape

a group of people living together in an area, having a particular characteristic in common, or a feeling of closeness with others as a result of shared goals, interests, or beliefs

an area of land that has a particular quality or appearance, generally natural or found in nature

Contemplative

a lasting evidence, reminder, or example of someone or something notable or great

involving, allowing, or causing deep thought or meditation

Form the shape and structure of something as distinguished from its material

Found Materials a natural or man-made object that is found by an artist and kept because of the value the artist sees in it, and then is incorporated into an artwork or displayed

Monument

Public Sculpture a work of art that is made by shaping plastic, clay, stone, wood, metal, or other available materials, and can be found in space accessible to the general public

Scale a distinctive relative size, extent, or degree

Questions to Consider Consider the following questions to think more about what you see, and the connections you might make with the artwork.

1. What materials do you notice in the sculptures? Why do you think the artist chose these materials?

2. What does this artwork remind you of? Where might you find these shapes in your daily life?

3. What do you notice in the area surrounding the sculpture? In what ways does the sculpture respond to its environment?

4. How are the sculptures similar? How are they different?

5. If you could touch the sculptures, how might you interact with them?

Look and Learn: Sculpture Hunt

Find each sculpture in Marcus Garvey Park. Create a drawing in response to the sculpture in the adjacent space. Use the map if you need help finding them!

Maren Hassinger Monuments, 2018 Eight site-specific sculptures in Marcus Garvey Park, Harlem Dimensions variable Courtesy the artist and Susan Inglett Gallery Maren Hassinger: Monuments is organized by Hallie Ringle, Assistant Curator, The Studio Museum in Harlem.

This exhibition is presented in partnership with NYC Parks, with support provided by the Marcus Garvey Park Alliance. These sitespecific works will be on view throughout Marcus Garvey Park from June 16, 2018, to June 10, 2019.

While The Studio Museum in Harlem’s galleries are currently closed, the Museum is working to deepen our roots in the community through inHarlem, a dynamic set of collaborative programs in our neighborhood. Over the next few years, we will continue our groundbreaking exhibitions, thoughtprovoking conversations, and engaging art-making workshops at a variety of partner and satellite locations in Harlem, including New York Public Library branches, Maysles Cinema, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and more.

As the Museum prepares to construct our new home, we are excited to work with our neighbors to share our mission throughout Harlem.

For more information, visit studiomuseum.org

@studiomuseum

#inHarlem #MarenHassinger

William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust

Funding for Maren Hassinger: Monuments is generously provided by Amy J. Goldrich. inHarlem is made possible thanks to Citi; the Stavros Niarchos Foundation; William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust; Rockefeller Brothers Fund; and The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. Additional All photos: Adam Reich

support is provided by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Council; and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.