Inspired by everyday objects and vernacular furniture, Hugh Hayden’s emotive sculptures explore the American dream. Hayden’s work seeks to “transform materials from our everyday life experience” and challenges stereotypes and ideas about class, race and gender.
Join Hayden in conversation with WBUR’s Arielle Gray to discuss the artist’s work and practice as expressed in the comprehensive investigation. Hugh Hayden: Working from home at the Rose Art Museum as well as the site-specific engagements in the Boston area: Gulf Stream (2022), presented by the Boston Public Art Triennial, and Huff and a Puff (2023) at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.
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ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
Ariel Gray is a Boston-based journalist, writer, and artist. She is a reporter for WBUR, Boston’s NPR station, where she covers black and brown communities from the perspective of arts and culture. She has written for NPR, Cosmopolitan, Shine, Boston Art ReviewAnd ZORA Magazine. As an artist, Gray’s practice explores the liminal spaces between her various identities—queer, Black, and neurodivergent—to find sites of possibility and creation. She is a 2020 Create Well Fund awardee and 2021 A4A Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts. In 2022, she was named the 2022–2024 Luminary Artist by the Isabella Stewart Garnder Museum, where Gray conceived the Future Archive Project, a community audio and photography exhibition centering Black LGBTQIA+ people in Greater Boston.
Hugh Hayden (born 1983 in Dallas, Texas) lives and works in New York City. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University. His recent solo exhibitions include Boogey Men at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Miami, FL, which traveled to the Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, TX; Hugh Hayden: Creation MythsPrinceton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; and Hugh HaydenWhite Columns, New York, NY. Recent group exhibitions include Forest of Dreams: Contemporary Tree SculptureFrederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI (2023), and NGV TriennialNational Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2023). Hayden serves on advisory boards of Columbia University School of the Arts, the Johnson Museum of Art of Cornell University, and the Cornell College of Architecture Art and Planning. His work is part of public collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, USA; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Miami, FL, USA; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; Smart Museum, Chicago, IL, and more.
This program, generously supported by the Wolf Kahn Foundation, takes place in conjunction with the exhibition Hugh Hayden: Working from homeSeptember 18, 2024–June 1, 2025 and is presented in collaboration with deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, The Trustees, and the Boston Public Art Triennial.
