BRATTLEBORO — In the coming months, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) will present several events in connection with “The Space Between Memory and Expectation,” an exhibit of large-format photographs by Renate Aller of mountains, glaciers, trees, the ocean, and other natural landscapes, paired with a site-specific installation of a moss-covered stone from the West Brattleboro home of the late artists Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason.
On Saturday, Dec. 3, at 5 p.m., Aller and Arezoo Moseni will discuss Aller's work at BMAC. Moseni is an artist and a senior art librarian at the New York Public Library who curated a previous exhibition of Aller's work. The event will begin with a 20-minute progressive rock performance by Moseni's husband, Steve Cox, on solo guitar. Register for this free, in-person event at brattleboromuseum.org or 802-257-0124, ext. 101. Walk-ins are also welcome, subject to available seating.
“During the pandemic, Arezoo founded an online studio visit group that has been a lifesaver and created a very close artist community, with many artists having collaborated and exchanged thoughts as well as work,” Aller said in a news release. “Her artist interviews and conversations are the most enriching.”
Moseni has exhibited her work in many solo and group exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, and her work is in numerous private and public collections. She has spearheaded numerous public dialogues and panel discussions.
A graduate of The Columbus College of Art and Design, Cox is a visual artist and a musician.
On Friday, Jan. 13, at 7 p.m., Aller will have a conversation about her exhibit with Makeda Djata Best, the Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography and the interim head of the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museums. Register for this free, in-person event at brattleboromuseum.org or 802-257-0124, ext. 101. Walk-ins are also welcome, subject to available seating.
Best is a leading expert in 19th- and 20th-century American photography, with a special interest in photojournalism, documentary, war photography, and text and image works. She is the author of Elevate the Masses: Alexander Gardner, Photography and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century America and the editor of Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography Since 1970.
On Friday, Jan. 27, and Saturday, Jan. 28, at 6 p.m., Megan Buchanan and a team of artistic collaborators will present two performances of Regenerations: Reckoning with Radioactivity, an interdisciplinary project that draws inspiration from The Space Between Memory and Expectation.
The project focuses on the spent radioactive fuel, radioactive water, and soil left behind by the former Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Vernon. It explores some of the impacts of nuclear energy throughout the world and includes expressions of grief and love for the earth.
Buchanan's collaborators include Susan Barba, Meg Bathory-Peeler, Grainne Buchanan, Liza Cassidy, Margie Ferry, Hannah Mohan, Nellie Prior, and others to be announced. Admission to each performance, which will include poetry, dance, projection, and live music, is $10, $5 for BMAC members, and free for students and youth 18 and under.
A series of creative development sessions for the Regenerations performances will take place at BMAC on the following Sundays from 1 to 3 p.m.: Dec. 11 and 18, and Jan. 8, 15, and 22. Admission to these sessions is free.
“Aller's photographs portray a stillness that belies a state of constant flux and movement of these natural environments-melting and eroding, changing with the seasons and the wind, never the same as they were seconds ago,” said BMAC Director of Exhibitions Sarah Freeman, who curated the exhibit. “Aller asks us to immerse ourselves in our surroundings, to notice every fissure, stipple, vein, and crag, with the understanding that this moment she has frozen in time has passed, and we will never experience the same landscape again.”
Born in Germany, Aller lives and works in New York. “The Space Between Memory and Expectation” and “side walk 6' apart in New York City” are her most recent projects. Her works are in the collections of corporate institutions, private collectors, and museums, including Lannan Foundation, National Gallery of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Parrish Art Museum, and Musée des Beaux-Arts in Le Locle, Switzerland.
“The Space Between Memory and Expectation” is on view at BMAC through Feb. 12, 2023.