Collaborative Exhibition of Contemporary Art and Design at the Historic Home of Eliot Noyes Opens with Dynamic In-Person and Digital Experience

At The Noyes House, presented by galleries Blum & Poe and Mendes Wood DM, along with art and design fair Object & Thing exhibits works by artists such as Alma Allen, Lynda Benglis, Sonia Gomes, Green River Project LLC, Mark Grotjahn, Kazunori Hamana, Sheila Hicks, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Antonio Obá, Gaetano Pesce, and Faye Toogood, among the house’s original furnishings.

At The Noyes House: Blum & Poe, Mendes Wood DM, and Object & Thing. The Noyes House, New Canaan, CT. Photo by Michael Biondo.

New York, NY, September 15, 2020--Today, At The Noyes House: Blum & Poe, Mendes Wood DM and Object & Thing, opens to the public, providing a unique opportunity to experience contemporary art and design in an iconic residential setting. Taking place within Eliot Noyes’s (1910-1977) modernist family home in New Canaan, Connecticut, the exhibition brings together just over eighty works from thirty-four international artists and designers, including Lynda Benglis, Sonia Gomes, Green River Project LLC, Mark Grotjahn, Kazunori Hamana, Sheila Hicks, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Antonio Obá, Gaetano Pesce, and Faye Toogood, among others. In addition to the organizing galleries, Blum & Poe and Mendes Wood DM, Object & Thing is presenting works contributed by art and design galleries: Ago Projects, Demisch Danant, Friedman Benda, Nonaka-Hill, Pace Gallery, Patrick Parrish Gallery, Salon 94 Design and Tiwa Select. The exhibition features a wide-range of works, including a number of site-specific pieces inspired by the iconic home and its history. Many of the works were produced over the course of this year as the space of our homes, the function of design and one’s experience with art has been reconceived and reconsidered.

At The Noyes House embraces the challenges of exhibiting art and design during a global pandemic, providing an experience of viewing art that is responsive to the time and reflective of future possibilities. An atmospheric video tour that includes comments from Eliot Noyes’s son, Frederick Noyes, and curator and writer Glenn Adamson, allows the opportunity to experience the space on an intimate, personal level virtually. For those able to travel to New Canaan, the exhibition is also open in-person through carefully coordinated, private reservations available every Saturday from September 15 - November 28, 2020, which can be made online from the three organizers’ websites beginning on September 15. These private appointments provide an experience akin to visiting the home of a friend with personal connections to some of the greatest creatives of our time -- an experience which the house has offered since the first days it became the Noyes family home, welcoming their good friends Alexander Calder (whose large-scale stabile sculpture, Black Beast II, was conceived for the house’s courtyard -- now in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York) and Charles and Ray Eames.

Frederick Noyes, son of Eliot Noyes, commented, “My father conceived of the architecture of the house as a backdrop to seamlessly mingle art with daily life. As I grew up, new artworks were continuously introduced, unfettered by period or style, and existing pieces rearranged as life changed. This exciting exhibition is a direct continuation of that tradition of bringing fresh ideas to the house. My father would be delighted.”

Key highlights of the presentation include:

A number of the artists and designers included in the exhibition created works specifically inspired by the Noyes House, including Green River Project LLC, whose outdoor furniture suite stands in place of the house’s slatted table and chairs and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s aluminum curtain conceived for the courtyard’s back doorway, framing the surrounding wooded landscape. Installed above the living room fireplace is a new painting by Mark Grotjahn from his most recent series, Capri. Created with this placement in mind, this work marks a departure in his practice, shifting the axis of his composition to a horizontal format, an orientation not utilized by the artist in over two decades. Megumi Arai’s boro textile piece was made as a bedspread for the platform bed in the master bedroom.
Other works respond beautifully to the space and allude to its history, such as Sonia Gomes’s biomorphic sculpture of stitched fabric, which is installed in the same space where an Alexander Calder mobile made specially for the Noyes family once hung. Alma Allen’s pleated bronze work Not Yet Titled, 2020 stands at over eight feet in the courtyard -- taking the place of Calder’s Black Beast II.
A few works in the exhibition are a response to the world's most pressing issues of today, as seen in Afro-Brazilian artist Antonio Obá’s Wade in the water, II, that pays homage to George Floyd. The face jugs of Jim McDowell, made in the southern African American tradition, are inscribed with messages that are often charged with politics such as “Love Trumps Hate” or “If you want freedom, keep moving – Harriet Tubman.”
Many of the works respond to the domestic setting, providing utility and sharing a new energy with the space. Gaetano Pesce’s vases help define the meeting of the indoors and outdoors along the living room’s glass wall, just where the Noyes family would keep house plants. Connecticut-based ceramicist, Frances Palmer, has filled her wood kiln fired vessels with seasonal flowers straight from her garden and will replenish the flowers throughout the exhibition every visit day.
Ceramic works by Lynda Benglis can be found on the house’s piano top as well as on the living room’s coffee table. Benglis began her exploration of the organic substance of clay in the early 1990s, a medium often rejected and considered subordinate by her male counterparts of the era. These works represent her endeavor to accomplish a more tangible encounter with her material, executed at an intimate scale in harmony with the domestic space. Near the piano is a sculpture on the floor by Arlene Shechet, who made Relative with the Noyes House in mind.

The house was designed in 1954 and completed in 1955, yet this marks the first time it has been open to the public. The exhibition and video provide insight and historical context behind the Harvard Five architect’s vision for the home that he created for his family. During his years in the home, Eliot Noyes and his family lived with works by modern artists such as Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Isamu Noguchi and Pablo Picasso. There was a casualness to their lifestyle and the works of art were integrated into everyday life. Preserving this legacy, the home has been opened on the occasion of this exhibition to display works on tabletops, desks, and walls - to use the back of an armchair - and without a plinth or pedestal in sight.

The Noyes House is a jewel among many architecturally significant residences in the area, including the Philip Johnson Glass House, from the time when Eliot Noyes and his Harvard Five contemporaries made New Canaan the epicenter of American midcentury modernist architecture. In 2019, the Noyes House was preserved in perpetuity through several easements with Preservation Connecticut in order to maintain the narrative of midcentury modern design and Noyes’s legacy.

The video tour was filmed by Michael Biondo, a New York and Connecticut-based photographer specializing in architecture and design.

To see the virtual experience or book a reservation to visit, please visit At The Noyes House exhibition pages on www.blumandpoe.com, www.mendeswooddm.com, or www.object-thing.com

The press kit with installation images can be accessed here

Artists

Alma Allen
Megumi Arai
Lucas Arruda
Lynda Benglis
Sergio Camargo
Miho Dohi
Hugo França
Aaron Garber-Maikovska
Tomoo Gokita
Sonia Gomes
Green River Project LLC
Mark Grotjahn
Kazunori Hamana
Sheila Hicks
Yukiko Kuroda
Mimi Lauter
Patricia Leite
Pablo Limón
Philippe Malouin
Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
Tony Marsh
Jim McDowell
Yoshitomo Nara
Paulo Nazareth
Antonio Obá
Johnny Ortiz
Frances Palmer
Gaetano Pesce
Celso Renato
Arlene Shechet
Faye Toogood
Rubem Valentim
Daniel Valero
Masaomi Yasunaga

Installation view, At The Noyes House: Blume & Poe, Mendes Wood DM and Object & Thing. The Noyes House, New Canaan, Connecticut. Photo by Michael Biondo.

About Blum & Poe

Blum & Poe was founded by Timothy Blum and Jeffrey Poe in Los Angeles in 1994 as a space to show local and international contemporary art in all media. Throughout a twenty-six-year history, Blum & Poe has shaped the trajectory of contemporary art by championing artists at all stages of their careers—cultivating the lineages that run between emerging and established practices, and working with artist estates to generate new discourse surrounding historical work. Now spanning three locations in Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo, Blum & Poe has collaborated with celebrated curators to stage museum-caliber surveys, examining the historical work of such movements as the Japanese Mono-ha school; the Korean Dansaekhwa monochrome painters; the European postwar movement CoBrA; a rereading of Brazilian Modernism (2019); and more.

About Mendes Wood DM

Mendes Wood DM was founded in São Paulo in 2010 by partners Felipe Dmab, Pedro Mendes, and Matthew Wood with the intent to exhibit international and Brazilian artists in a context conducive to critical dialogue and cross-pollination. Central to the gallery’s program is a concern for regional difference and individuation while fostering collaboration. Inspired by a belief that artistic practices broaden the scope of human agency and have the power to both touch and change the world, Mendes Wood DM cultivates a program premised on conceptualism, political resistance and intellectual rigor.

About Object & Thing

Object & Thing brings together object-based 20th and 21st century works from leading international art and design galleries in a new fair concept that focuses on the object both through in-person exhibitions and a corresponding e-commerce site, object-thing.com. Object & Thing was founded in 2019 by Abby Bangser, former Artistic Director of Frieze Art Fairs for the Americas and Asia with significant experience in non-profit arts institutions, and is organized in coordination with artistic director Rafael de Cárdenas.

Collaborative Exhibition of Contemporary Art and Design at the Historic Home of Eliot Noyes Opens with Dynamic In-Person and Digital Experience

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