More than a fresh coat of paint!

Whenever I spruce up my house with flowers from the yard or a quick spin with the vacuum it helps me feel refreshed, relaxed, and ready for the next few days to come. Even if no one special is coming to visit, just changing the furniture around, replanting a few pots on the front porch, or fixing something I know has been broken for months can set in motion a pattern of productivity, satisfaction and excitement for the future.

At the Dixon, this pattern was set in motion in March and will continue to move through the next three weeks until the opening of the Forain retrospective. To welcome all of our summer visitors and members and art arriving from all over the world, we will be sprucing up in more ways than one. Between last week and the weekend of June 26, a large portion of the grounds and museum will undergo a complete transformation.

Watch the blog to see these numerous exciting changes taking place—some large, and some small, made with paint, vacuums, construction, plantings, lighting, signage, shovels, flowers, furniture, color, people and of course, art. All things combined will produce a visitor experience to the Dixon and to the Forain retrospective to rival any in the past.

The first renovation took place in late March near the museum entrance. After installing new signage on the façade of the building, the garden staff planted parterres, a method of imposing geometric shapes on the landscape with plants. These parterres were inspired by a design found in an 18^th century French gardening book. Be sure to take a close look at these the next time you visit---they contain 500 boxwoods EACH. New elements in other areas of the garden include the hornbeam allee, connecting the admission booth entrance to the Ceres sculpture, and a generous helping of hydrangeas, lavender and coneflower. Following suit with the French, the Dixon raises gardening to a high art.

Then, we re-painted the auditorium a dark charcoal gray in order to better highlight our pewter collection and create an optical illusion of a higher ceiling.

 

Next we’ll move outside to Garrott Court and the gardens to watch our new café root from a lovely patch of green grass and the residence take on color, rhythm, and life.

- Emily Halpern, Associate Director of Communications