John Haskell reading

"I dream of a new age of curiosity.
We have the technical means for it;
the desire is there;
the things to be known are infinite;
the people who can employ
themselves at this task exist.

Why do we suffer?
From too little: from channels
that are too narrow, skimpy,
quasi-monopolistic, insufficient.
There is no point in adopting
a quasi-protectionist attitude,
to prevent 'bad' information from
invading and suffocating the 'good'.
Rather, we must simply multiply
the paths and the possibilities
of comings and goings"

– Michel Foucault 

Program Description

Mildred's Lane is an artist-driven project for the rethinking of the contemporary art complex, which is tucked away in the woods of Pennsylvania, on the upper Delaware River. It is a large-scale collaboration between the artists J. Morgan Puett and Mark Dion who have lived and worked on this rustic 96-acre site since 1998. From the beginning there has been a desire to critically re-imagine the space between environmental practice, artistic domesticating, and socially engaged research. By hosting and supporting international cultural producers, organizing informal residencies, developing site sensitive projects, seminars, dinners, research think tanks and more — they have made Mildred's Lane a significant but invisible center for new forms of cultural practice

Now, out of the dialogues and the innovative cultural projects produced at this site, a new form of institution and educational program is emerging. We are embarking on this adventure in the spirit of critical curiosity to foster an experimental location to bring diverse researchers, makers, and thinkers together to take on broad ranging interdisciplinary matters of concern. Dion, Puett and their associates will teach from within this mode of doing. This program initiates what we feel needs to happen both in terms of art making and art teaching — the development of socially engaged research into broad ranging conceptual issues of 21st century life, comportment, and environmental practice. This experiment is currently most visible in several large-scale, site-sensitive art projects in the form of architectural experiments, 19th century out-buildings, landscaping interventions, as well a large archive. These projects and their histories will become the core of the new complex — The Mildred's Lane Historical Society and Museum — so titled to honor Mildred Steffens Miller, a remarkable woman farmer who lived on this land. Parallel to this museum is the educational and research program.

This creative environment will allow for something not possible in a traditional academic institution or arts organization — a working-living-researching site for large-scale project-based practices. Mildred's Lane welcomes this "new age of curiosity" — activating connections that situate themselves at the nexus of science, methods of living and critical artistic practices, thus engaging in, and with the world.

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