KEN SMITH WORKSHOP
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE URBANISM ART
 Fenway Deity, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA
Start Date: 2014 Completion Date: 2015 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Client BuroHappold, Engineering George Bouret, Photography The Fenway Deity is the latest in numerous temporary installations Ken Smith has executed over the past 25 years. Temporary installations have been a core R&D method in the Workshop to explore new ideas about landscape. The Fenway Deity explores the relationship between the Gardner Museum and the Boston Fenway, and the interrelatedness of environmental and cultural vitality in the health of urban areas. The large inflatable installation, with a psychedelic spiral pattern and gold chain, hung for four months from the historic façade of the Museum facing the Boston Fens. The Deity riffs on the Gardner’s large wheel window on the building’s rear façade, forming a transect line through the Museum, between the window and the installation. The Deity creates a new conduit for the Museum’s creative energy to protect the Fens from bad spirits and promote environmental renewal, health, and happiness along the Fenway and beyond.

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