WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.- The Clark Art Institute announces its second outdoor sculpture exhibition, Ground/work 2025. Set throughout the woodland trails and open meadows of the Clark’s distinctive 140- acre campus, the exhibition includes newly commissioned, site-specific installations by six leading contemporary artists.
Curated by independent art historian Glenn Adamson, Ground/work 2025 features a dynamic range of outdoor presentations by international artists, Yō Akiyama, Laura Ellen Bacon, Aboubakar Fofana, Hugh Hayden, Milena Naef, and Javier Senosiain that respond to the Clark’s unique setting while expressing ideas core to each artist’s individual practice. Like the inaugural Ground/work, which opened in summer 2020, the installations will remain on view for over one year allowing visitors to encounter the works day or night and throughout the seasons, experiencing them anew as the landscape and weather conditions change. Ground/work 2025 closes in October 2026.
“When we first considered doing our initial Ground/work exhibition, we always hoped that the public’s response would inspire future iterations of the project,” said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark. “The enthusiastic embrace of this concept was immediate and intense when we opened the exhibition in 2020 and the public’s interest in and enthusiasm for another Ground/work project has been constant. We eagerly await the opportunity to bring this new presentation to life and to experience our grounds through the eyes of this new cohort of artists. Glenn Adamson, our guest curator, has invited artists whose work will be particularly responsive to the natural setting here at the Clark and we are confident that our visitors will be delighted by the works of art that are planned.”
Glenn Adamson is an American curator, author, and art historian whose work focuses on the intersections of contemporary art, design, and craft, which he defines as “skilled making, on a human scale.”
“The monumentality of this project, and its global range of artists, definitely make it a milestone in the institutional presentation of craft,” Adamson says. “At the same time, I love the radical accessibility of it—the fact that it can be seen by anyone, free of charge, at any time of the day. Imagine a group of kids walking through the woods and suddenly coming upon one of these huge sculptures, a strange and beautiful presence in a clearing, and then learning how was made. How magical is that?"
THE EXHIBITION
A reverence for nature and a desire to further enliven the surrounding trails, pastures, and woods inspired Ground/work—the Clark’s first outdoor exhibition in 2020. Building on a history of collaboration with contemporary artists, the Clark commissioned Kelly Akashi, Nairy Baghramian, Jennie C. Jones, Eva LeWitt, Analia Saban, and Haegue Yang to create new works of art in active dialogue with the Clark’s specific environment.
This second iteration, Ground/work 2025, features specially-commissioned works located throughout the grounds, and the landscape. For the 2025 exhibition, the focus is on global conceptions of craft: the means by which artists transform the world around them.
In Eurocentric art history, it has long been accepted practice to draw a firm line between craft and fine art. In many parts of the world, however, no distinction exists; rather, there is a holistic domain of making and meaning. In surveying craft across cultures and practices, Ground/work 2025 aims to transcend the binary question—"Is it art or is it craft?”—and instead highlight craft as a motor for artistic expression. The exhibition foregrounds the international diversity in craft, with a range of artists critically reflecting on the traditions that inform their skilled making. The six participating artists represent a diversity of geography, materiality, ethnicity, gender, and generation, and each possesses a craft-intensive practice as well as an informed and dynamic relationship to national or regional traditions, exemplifying the way that artisanal traditions can be reinvented to generate contemporary form and meaning. Ground/work 2025 is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by independent curator Glenn Adamson.
