Ten thousand lead-crystal pendants dance beneath a cloud of scrunched-up chicken wire. Suspended on nine poles above a fancy patio, the art installation “Cloud Terrace” captures the stark, cold winter light and throws it back in flashes of color, intense bursts of orange, scarlet, indigo. John Beardsley has been drawn to this spectacle over and over since it went up in April and has found it to be a siren with many songs. “The piece has different moods,” he says, striding toward it. “When the shadows come, the crystals are like dew on a spider web. When the sun comes out . . .” The sentence is unfinished, but we know what he means. It’s dazzling.
Beardsley’s official title at Dumbarton Oaks is director of garden and landscape studies, but he is also playing the role of impresario: “Cloud Terrace” is the third in a series of temporary, edgy installations by environmental artists that Beardsley has organized since he was appointed in 2008. A fourth will be unveiled later this year. ¶ The installations have been widely although not unanimously praised. More remarkable is that they are there at all: Until Beardsley came to the Harvard University research institution in Georgetown, no one had dared to use the historic and sanctified landscape in such a way.
(Anatole Tchikine) - Artforms named \"Easy Rider\" by artist Patrick Dougherty, installed at the Hornbeam Ellipse at Dumbarton Oaks in 2011.
The installations have helped increase the number of visitors to the garden and galvanized dozens of volunteers. Most of all, the artworks have breathed new life into a garden that had become, perhaps, ossified by its own historical significance.
“It’s made such a difference in the way we think of ourselves,” said Gail Griffin, the director of gardens and grounds.
The first of the series, “Landscape/Body/Dwelling,” by Charles Simonds in 2009, featured placements of weird figurative and architectural clay sculptures staged indoors and out. The second, the 2010 “Easy Rider,” by Patrick Dougherty, consisted of 15 woven twiggy sculptures rising like tornadoes around the formal clipped hedge of the Hornbeam Ellipse.
“Cloud Terrace,” occupying most of an overlook named the Arbor Terrace, is the work of artistic partners Andy Cao and Xavier Perrot. The bejeweled cloud of wire is held above an existing parterre, reworked to hold a reflecting pool. The piece was due to come down in November but is still popular and looking good and will be around until April, barring destructive weather, Beardsley said.
The estate’s 10-acre garden was designed between the world wars by pioneering landscape architect Beatrix Farrand for her patrons, Mildred and Robert Bliss. In 1940, the Blisses gave the property to Harvard. Its mansion and attendant buildings house centers of pre-Columbian and Byzantine art, a related museum and a library of rare garden books. The garden synthesizes Italian, French and English styles in a highly crafted series of spaces, many of them formal in character and layered with symbolism and narrative.
The Oxford Companion to the Garden describes it as “one of America’s most celebrated gardens,” making the Simonds debut, in particular, a brave choice for Beardsley.
This commenter is a Washington Post contributor. Post contributors aren’t staff, but may write articles or columns. In some cases, contributors are sources or experts quoted in a story.
Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.
To pause and restart automatic updates, click "Live" or "Paused". If paused, you'll be notified of the number of additional comments that have come in.
Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.
Loading...
Comments