Tuesdays, November 4, 11, and 18 | 5:30 to 6:30pm
Individual Class: $49 Member; $55 | Full Three Class Series: $108 Member; $120 | Limited seats available
“Getting” Contemporary Art is an interactive class series designed to connect today’s exhibitions with the deeper currents of art history. Each session explores the art historical and cultural contexts of artists currently on view at The Aldrich, blending storytelling, close looking, and discussion to help participants uncover new ways of seeing contemporary art. No prior experience with art history is required, only curiosity and a willingness to dive in.
“Getting” Contemporary Art is led by Kristen Erickson, art history teacher and Director of the Luchsinger Gallery at Greenwich Academy.
Attend all three classes or a single class!
Classes
Tuesday, November 4 – Nickola Pottinger: Jamaica, Memory, and Folklore
This class delves into the history and folklore of Jamaica to better understand Nickola Pottinger’s shape-shifting sculptures. Through a gallery walk, participants will examine the mix of spiritual and personal symbols in her works, which include casts of her own body and family heirlooms. Group discussion will encourage participants to uncover the layers of meaning carried by these spectral figures, which merge ancestral traditions with contemporary stories.
Tuesday, November 11 – Zak Prekop: Music in Abstraction
Have you heard of Song Exploder, the podcast where musicians take apart their songs piece by piece? In this class, participants will “explode” the vibrant abstract paintings of Zak Prekop. The session will focus on how he creates a sense of movement and stillness through color relationships, while also considering art historical precedents such as the “action painting” of the 1950s. Participants will further explore Prekop’s musical influences and how rhythm and harmony appear in his painting practice.
Tuesday, November 18 – Uman: Textiles, Calligraphy, and Transformation
Uman’s kaleidoscopic paintings reflect the story of her extraordinary life. She grew up in Somalia and Kenya, spent her teen years in Denmark, and traveled to Vienna and Paris before moving to New York where her artistic vision blossomed. This class will introduce participants to the art histories that shaped her, including East African textiles, Arabic calligraphy, and the work of Gustav Klimt and Sam Gilliam. During a gallery walk, participants will consider how Uman captures her memories, dreams, and personal transformation in visionary paintings that celebrate survival and creativity.
Instructor Bio
Kristen Erickson has been teaching art history and curating exhibitions for the past three decades. She spent eight years working in the curatorial field at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Smith College Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art before turning to teaching. Kristen currently teaches art history at Greenwich Academy, where she also runs the campus art gallery. She holds degrees in French and art history from Vassar College and Oxford University. A resident of Ridgefield, Kristen loves making contemporary art come alive for new audiences.
Saturday, December 6, 2025 | 7 pm
$10 Members and Students; $15 General Admission
Join us for an intimate duo performance by composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies and bassist Tristan Kasten-Krause, presented in connection with Zak Prekop: Durations. Hennies and Kasten-Krause will present a 40-60 minute set of experimental music within the Museum’s galleries, offering a meditative, resonant experience that blurs the boundaries between sound, space, and visual art.
Sarah Hennies is known for her immersive and durational performances that explore psychoacoustic phenomena, queerness, and the act of listening. Her duo with Kasten-Krause combines sensitivity and restraint, crafting quiet, expansive works that unfold gradually over time.
This event is presented in conjunction with Zak Prekop: Durations (on view through January 11, 2026), an exhibition exploring visual rhythm, repetition, and the temporality of painting. It also marks the launch of Zak Prekop’s first museum publication. This fully illustrated, 32-page softcover catalogue features bold new abstract paintings by the artist, along with an interview between Prekop and curator Eduardo Andres Alfonso. The catalogue will be available for purchase at the event.
Thursday, December 11, 2025 | 6 to 7 pm
Free: Members; $10 General Admission; $5 Seniors/Students
Join Diana Bowes Chief Curator Amy Smith-Stewart for an exclusive after-hours tour of Uman: After all the things…. The exhibition includes new and recent paintings, a mural, and sculpture. New York Magazine recently hailed the artist’s work as “a reminder of what painting can still do.”
Members, please join us at 5:30 pm for refreshments with Amy Smith-Stewart prior to the tour. To become a member, email hhart@thealdrich.org or join online here.
Join Curator of Education Michelle DiMarzo for an informal discussion of this artwork, one of the first objects to enter the Museum’s collection: Paolo Fiammingo, Adoration of the Shepherds, ca. 1577-1582, oil on canvas. Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation via The Discovery Museum, Bridgeport, CT (2009.01.07). We’ll talk about some recent discoveries that have shed more light on the painting’s original appearance!
Join Curator of Education Michelle DiMarzo for an informal discussion of this artwork, one of the first objects to enter the Museum’s collection: Paolo Fiammingo, Adoration of the Shepherds, ca. 1577-1582, oil on canvas. Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation via The Discovery Museum, Bridgeport, CT (2009.01.07). We’ll talk about some recent discoveries that have shed more light on the painting’s original appearance!
Experience Mikailwitl For Generaciones Perdidas, a new performance by Marcela Torres in The Aldrich’s Sculpture Garden. Featuring Mitotilliztli danzantes, traditional danza, sound, reggaeton rhythms, and ceremonial elements, the work honors lost lineages and the sacredness of land while paying tribute to the Ramapough Lenape Nation and Lunaape Munsee Delaware Nation. Guests are invited to bring a flower or bouquet as their offering and admission to the collective altar.
What do porcelain and cocaine have in common? In artist David Torres’s work, they share a name and spark a conversation through the artist’s blending of 18th-century Rococo aesthetics and the flashy visual style of 1980s–90s Colombian drug cartels. Join Torres and Vanessa Sigalas, David W. Dangremond Chief Curator, for a conversation about the artist’s process and his sculpture Me White Gold (2023), recently acquired by the Wadsworth. Meet outside the Museum Shop.
Free with museum admission. Registration encouraged.
Presented with support from the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation Fund at the Wadsworth Atheneum.
5pm gallery viewing | 6pm lecture
Contemporary Seneca artist Marie Watt discusses her creative process and artwork that explores the intersection of history, community, and storytelling.
Marie Watt (she/her, b. 1967, Seattle, WA) is a member of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation of Indians whose work draws on images and ideas from Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) protofeminism and Indigenous teachings. Her practice is interdisciplinary, incorporating printmaking, painting, textiles, and sculpture. Watt conducts both solo and collaborative projects, but in all of them she explores how history, community, and storytelling intersect. Watt holds an MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University; she also has degrees from Willamette University and the Institute of American Indian Arts; and in 2016 she was awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa from Willamette University. Selected collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, the Crystal Bridges Museum, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and National Museum of American Art, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum, and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Watt is represented by PDX Contemporary Art in Portland, OR; Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, CA; and Marc Straus in New York, NY.
Free. Registration encouraged.
Presented with support from the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation and with additional support provided by the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation Fund at the Wadsworth Atheneum.
Oliver Tostmann, Susan Morse Hilles Curator of European Art, and Erin Monroe, Krieble Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, share highlights from the museum’s new installation Inventing the Modern: Art 1890-1970, exploring the development of modern art as a complex phenomenon evolving across decades, styles, and continents. Meet outside the Museum Shop.
Free with admission. Registration required.
Through their successful silk business in Manchester, Connecticut, the Cheney family brought global taste and style to turn-of-the century Hartford with their pursuit of fashion and artworks as markers of refinement. Join Erin Monroe, Krieble Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, and Ned Lazaro, associate curator of costume and textiles, as they explore how the museum’s collections help tell the story of the Cheney influence on local culture. Meet outside the museum shop.
Free with admission. Registration encouraged.