Waltham Residents Get Free Admission to DeCordova on September 23 and 24

Due to the generosity of Charles River Ventures of Waltham, residents of that city will receive free admission – along with other discounts – when they visit the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park on the weekend of September 23 and 24.

During these Waltham Days at DeCordova, all Waltham residents will receive:

Free admission to DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park
5% - 10% discounts at The Store and Café at DeCordova
Discount on an annual Membership if you sign-up this weekend

To receive these benefits, residents must show proof as residency, such as their driver’s license, at DeCordova’s visitor’s station.

Through their sponsorship, Charles River Ventures, which is one of the industry's leading venture capital firms with more than 30 years of experience in investing in great entrepreneurs and building great companies, are providing Waltham residents access to the contemporary arts. DeCordova, which is located on Sandy Pond Road in Lincoln, is one of the leading art institutions in the North East. For more than 50 years, the Museum has showcased the work of emerging and established artists, with a particular focus on New England artists. With a 35-acre Sculpture Park that features 80 works, a robust slate of exhibition and educational programs, and the largest non-degree granting studio art program in the state, the DeCordova experience is truly unique.

When Waltham residents arrive at DeCordova, what will they see? A zoo! On view is Going Ape: Confronting Animals in Contemporary Art (September 2, 2006 – January 7, 2007) which brings together 20 artists/artist teams from around the country who take on the animal world from a wide range of points of view, and in a wide spectrum of media – both traditional and contemporary. The exhibit features 90 artworks and 99 monkeys.

A great many artists these days create images of animals, and indeed animals have been a constant fascination for artists throughout the entirety of art history. Animals have appeared, traditionally, as decorative motifs, sacred beings, moral symbols, attributes of portrait subjects, and in hunt scenes and bucolic or romantic visions of nature. In recent years, artists have expanded the range of animal-related artwork to include issues such as animal-human relationships, distinctions between wild and tame, habitat loss, bio-engineering, and anthropomorphized animals. The artists in Going Ape deal with all of these themes, as well as several others, in painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, video, and installation art. Come see dogs, chimps, cockroaches, squirrels, elephants, goats, tigers, raccoons, a stairwell full of monkeys, diverse denizens of the deep, and birds galore!

Organized by DeCordova Curators Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, Nick Capasso, and Curatorial Fellow Dina Deitsch, Going Ape is accompanied by a full-color exhibition catalogue, and includes work by Deborah Brown, Catherine Chalmers, Walton Ford, James Grashow, Catherine Hamilton, John Harden, Henry Horenstein, Mary Kenny, Vitaly Komar & Alex Melamid, Neeta Madahar, Barbara Moody, Josie Morway, Gwynn Murrill, Frank Noelker, Barbara Norfleet, Shelley Reed, Amy Ross, Peter Smuts, Brad Story, and Kitty Wales.

This exhibition is funded by a generous grant from the Lois and Richard England Family Foundation.

Also on view at DeCordova is William Tucker: Horses (September 2, 2006 – January 7, 2007). William Tucker is an internationally-renowned contemporary sculptor who had already established a significant career as an artist in Britain before moving to the United States in 1978. In the 1980s, Tucker first created a series of highly abstracted, expressionist bronze sculptures of horses’ heads. In 2003, Tucker returned to the theme, producing several new sculptures and a group of charcoal drawings. This exhibition, organized by Director of Curatorial Affairs Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, brings together the work from this series, and includes Chinese Horse, a large sculpture that has been on view on DeCordova’s Sculpture Terrace for the last two years.

For more information about Charles River Ventures visit www.crv.com. For more information about DeCordova, visit www.decordova.org.

General Information
DeCordova Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm and on selected Monday holidays. General Campus admission during Museum hours is $9 for adults, $6 for senior citizens, students, and youth ages 6–12. Children age 5 and under, Lincoln residents, and Active Duty Military Personnel and their dependents are admitted free. The Sculpture Park is open year round during daylight hours. The Store @ DeCordova and the School Gallery are open Monday through Thursday, 9:30 am to 7:30 pm, Friday through Saturday, 9:30 am to 5:30 pm, and Sunday 10:30 am to 5:30 pm. The Café @ DeCordova is open Tuesday from noon to 3 pm, and Wednesday through Sunday from 11 am to 4 pm. Guided public tours of the Museum's main galleries take place every Thursday at 1 and Sunday at 2 pm; these are free with Campus admission. Guided tours of the Sculpture Park are given on Saturday and Sunday at 1 pm from May to October; these are free with Campus admission. Visit www.decordova.org or call 781/259-8355 for further information.