Watershed Moment a Site Specific Art Installation

Jorge Otero-Pailos
Watershed Moment
Fall Preview: September 18^th-November 1^ST, 2020
FRIDAY – SUNDAY, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Last entry at 3:30pm

Swimming pool building
Free entry to exhibit: Purchase of Daily Grounds Pass or Landscape Tour ticket required to enter property by car.

Watershed Moment is a site-specific art installation commissioned to mark the opening of Lyndhurst’s cavernous and unrestored swimming pool building after a period of extensive stabilization to the building’s structure. Combining water sounds and dust and conceived as a meditative space by artist and historic preservation expert Jorge Otero-Pailos, the installation invites visitors to pause and reflect on the memories, both personal, social and environmental, that define each of us. The installation includes latex casts of the raw brick interior walls of the pool building suspended from ceiling joists over the empty swimming pool below. While perambulating the mosaic tile-inlaid pool deck, visitors can experience these 67-foot-long curtains of glowing latex while being enveloped by a series of water sounds recorded from throughout New York State. In its unrestored state, the building is spacious, unsealed and well-ventilated with a clear directional path through the exhibition, providing ample social-distancing space between visitors.

Built by Helen Gould in 1911, the Lyndhurst swimming pool building was designed as a Roman bath for the late Gilded Age elite. It was abandoned during World War II when coal was unavailable to heat the boilers. Over the years it was destroyed by water leaking through the roof, causing plaster and wood elements to deteriorate. Today it is evocatively ruined but in stabilized condition. Watershed Moment marks the first time that the Lyndhurst swimming pool building will be open to the public as a museum space.

About the Artist

Jorge Otero-Pailos is a New York-based artist and preservation architect best known for making monumental casts of historically charged buildings. Drawing from his formal training in architecture and preservation, Otero-Pailos’ art practice deals with memory, culture, and transitions, and invites the viewer to consider buildings and functional objects as powerful agents of change. Many of his artworks are made by preserving parts of monuments deemed insignificant by others, whether it be dust, or entire building parts.

For more information about the exhibition visit the Lyndhurst website.

The exhibition will reopen to the public in its full form from May 28^th through September 26^th, 2021.  At that time, pending cessation of the coronavirus pandemic, visitors will be able to visit the exhibition at their leisure. Additional exhibition materials will be included at that time.