Black artist’s ‘Colored Garden’ confronts Glass House’s past, future

NEW CANAAN — Three Black artists will be featured at the Glass House as it seeks “new interpretations” for the National Historic Landmark, once the home of renowned midcentury modern architect Philip Johnson.

The Glass House faces “debates about Johnson’s legacy,” as tours start on the 49-acre site featuring nine floral works by Connecticut artist Charles Ethan Porter in the Painting Gallery and a pollinator pathway named “A Colored Garden” by artist David Hartt. In the entrance of the gallery, a video directed by Hartt features cellist Tomeka Reid as she portrays herself as a resident of the Glass House.

Glass House staff discussed moving forward in light of Johnson’s complex history — a gay man who expressed Nazi sympathies before WWII and who went on to become a leader in midcentury modern architecture, which his home exemplifies.

“What is your responsibility when narrating history?” Senior Curator and Special Projects Manager Cole Akers asked as he rejected “a foregone conclusion that the site can only be about Philip Johnson.”

“We’re going to a new phase,” Communication Director Christa Carr said as the group considers “what else is possible here,” and look at “new interpretations” for the site.

For the second year, Hartt’s project, called “A Colored Garden,” will bloom with the flowers featured in paintings by Porter, such as peonies and chrysanthemums.

The title makes a reference to how Porter refers to himself in a letter to Mark Twain, a benefactor of the artist, to thank the author for helping him with his travels in Paris, Akers explained.

In his 1883 letter, he writes of “a goodly number of my friends and others who are anxious to see how the colored artist will make out, but this is not the motive which impresses me. There is something of more importance, the colored people — my people — as a race I am interested in, and my success will only add to others who have already shown wherein they are capable the same as other men,” Porter wrote.

Hartt “self-consciously, and somewhat provocatively, uses the word that Porter used to describe himself.” Akers said that the garden is “a kind of metaphor for thinking about race in the landscape.”

The project by Hartt considers the site’s “new possibilities for social, political and cultural engagement in the present moment,” the website states.

The title and work can “provoke conversation” and questions “critically about the history of the site here,” since it has been “identified in such a particular way,” Akers said.

Hartt researched the historic landscaping on the premises, taking into account the influence of curator David Whitney, who was Johnson’s partner for over 40 years, Akers said. He added that Hartt examined “how different types of cultures travel” and “create new kinds of cultural expression as they move from one context to another.”

In the video “Et in Arcadia Ego,” seen as visitors enter the gallery, Reid rises from the bed in the Glass House, writes music at the desk and wanders the property. The soundtrack is her cello composition and it can be heard throughout the gallery.

Reid, a composer, improviser, cellist, curator, and teacher, will be playing with an ensemble later in the season on the premises.

The film, inspired by Greek mythology, also features a giant Black woman, created with the same kind of software used for video games, Akers explained. The giant woman in gold is seen in front of one of the site’s 14 structures, the Pavilion by the Pond, known for its fanciful optical illusion.

The main gallery features only Porter’s work. He was a student at the National Academy of Design in New York City and was one of the first Black artists to exhibit nationally. But, as an artist, he was “not as well-known as he should be,” Akers said.

Porter’s works are in collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, Lyman Allyn Art Museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum and the Connecticut Historical Society.

The paintings of flowers by Porter, which are being shown now in New Canaan, are from the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in New York City.