“To sustain and further the creative spirit in art and science…in harmony with the gifts of the earth.”
— Otto Piene, Groton, Massachusetts, July 23, 2005
The Elizabeth Goldring-Otto Piene Foundation in Groton, Massachusetts maintains an intact, beautiful, traditional piece of agriculture and natural property in the service of the arts, the greater environment, and New England’s educational and academic world. The Foundation is dedicated to art as a living link between thought and matter, between the cerebral and the physical, at once spiritual and sensual whether in painting, media, or public celebrations.
Mission Statement
The Elizabeth Goldring-Otto Piene Foundation will preserve and conserve the art farm in Groton, Massachusetts as a sustainable site dedicated to research, education, creative practice, and collaboration. As a living museum, the farm inspires and supports today’s artists and scholars to reach for what Piene called “more sky.”
About the “Art Farm”
The farm is a site of expansive gardens, fields, and natural settings. Multiple permanent artworks dot the landscape. Artists interact with the various spaces and artworks to create new work, keeping the legacy of the farm alive. Conserving the output of the two artists, Otto Piene and Elizabeth Goldring Piene, who shared the property since the 1980s, the farm is maintained as a site for artistic exploration, collaboration, and institutional outreach.
Otto Piene
A founder of the influential Zero Group in the late 1950s, Otto Piene forged an artistic career marked by constant experimentation across diverse media, including kinetic light sculptures and installations, smoke and fire paintings, ceramics, and monumental inflatables that have soared in performances and events worldwide. Characterized by a combination of art and technology, as well as an interest in ritual, performance and communal experience, his work demands that viewers play an active role in the artwork. Piene was also a keen philosophical thinker, penning notable essays about art and perception.
Otto Piene (1928–2014) was born in Germany and spent the latter half of his life dividing his time between the United States and Europe, directing the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for two decades. Selected recent solo exhibitions include Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2020), Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen (2019/2020), Fitchburg Art Museum (2019), Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (2015), Kunsthalle Bremen (2015), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2014), ZKM, Karlsruhe (2013) and MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2011). Selected group exhibitions include Centre Pompidou-Metz (2021), Yayoi Kusama Museum, Tokyo (2020), Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf (2018), Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon (2017), Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2015), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2014), Bienal de São Paulo (1985), Venice Biennale (1971, 1967), and Documenta 6, 3 and 2 (1977, 1964, 1959). He received numerous awards, including the Max Beckmann Prize, Frankfurt (2013), the UNESCO Joan Miro Medal (2003), and the Sculpture Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York (1996).
wikipedia: Otto Piene
Elizabeth Goldring
Elizabeth Goldring is a visually challenged poet and artist. She serves as Chairman of the Board of the Elizabeth Goldring-Otto Piene Foundation. As Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT, Goldring collaborated with MIT and Harvard engineers, scientists, physicians, artists, and students to create seeing tools and visual experiences for herself and others like her with severe vision loss due to macular degeneration or other diseases of the cornea, retina and lens.
Goldring recently released her fifth book of poems, Still Blue. The publication includes her unique genre of artworks known as retina prints that incorporate laser scanned imagery on her own and others’ retinas. She co-authored with Ellen Sebring the first history of MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Centerbook: The Center for Advanced Visual Studies and the Evolution of Art-Science-Technology at MIT, published by SAP Press and ZKM Karlsruhe, distributed by the MIT Press (2019).
website: elizabethgoldring.com
wikipedia: Elizabeth Goldring Piene
Board
Elizabeth Goldring Piene, Founder and Chairman of the Board, Goldring-Piene Foundation; CAVS Co-Director and Fellow (retired)
Susan Heide, Managing Director, Blackrock (retired); Estate Trustee
Edgar Quadt, collector and consultant
Seth Riskin, Founder and Manager, MIT Museum Studio; CAVS Alumnus
Lynette Roth, Daimler Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard Art Museums
Andreas Schleicher-Lange, Senior Director, Sprueth Magers Gallery, Berlin
Ellen Sebring, Foundation Managing Director; Creative Director, MIT Visualizing Cultures; CAVS MIT Alumna
Günter Thorn, Artist and Otto Piene’s assistant/collaborator
Gediminas Urbonas, Associate Professor, Art, Culture & Technology, MIT
Advisory Board
Jan Hoffmann, Student, EBS Business School
Andrew O’Donnell, Attorney, Mirick, O’Connell, DeMallie & Lougee
Sarah Olson, Superintendent, Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites (retired) (Elizabeth’s sister)
Jessica Spira-Goldring, Musician, Alexander Technique instructor (Elizabeth’s daughter)
Helen Weinert, Civil Engineering intern (Otto’s granddaughter)
Max Württemberger, Filmmaker (Otto’s grandson)
Early image of the farm with CAVS/MIT artists, including Otto Piene, Lowry Burgess, and Tal Streeter
“The artist always has had a very strong role in making the connection between the metaphysical world of the stars . . . and the physical world, the earthly world, the factual roots with which we live when we walk on the asphalt,” Otto Piene told the Boston Globe in 1985. “This is just continuing the tradition that the artist has always lived for: placing markers in that everyday world in which we live.”
Read an overview of Otto’s life and work:
— Otto Piene, at 86; created art installations that reached the sky, Michael J. Bailey, The Boston Globe, July 21, 2014