Dreihaus: The Poor, The Rich, & The Ghosts

The Ghost(writer)s

"A Tale of Today: Materialities" also brings to the forefront the "ghosts" of history—those marginalized individuals and communities whose stories have been omitted from mainstream narratives. Highlighting the often-overlooked narratives within the mansion's history, several works pay homage to marginalized communities and the natural world.

Dakota Mace | Dáda'ak'ehgo łitso (there are yellow fields all around), 2024
Dakota Mace's Dáda'ak'ehgo łitso is a reference to Dine indigenous culture and how co-creation and dependency shaped the Driehaus iterations. The installation transforms a historically private space—Mrs. Nickerson’s bedroom—into an immersive homage to Diné culture. Using natural dyes and eco-printing, Mace links cultural memory to environmental textures, honoring Indigenous contributions and intergenerational care that are absent from dominant historical narratives.

Edra Soto | Entrelazadas I, Entrelazadas II, Entrelazadas III, 2023
Edra Soto's Entrelazadas triptych inserts Puerto Rican rejas—decorative security grilles—into sculptural pillars that mimic and disrupt the mansion’s grand columns. These rejas, traditionally associated with working-class and Afro-Caribbean architecture, recontextualize the luxury surroundings, raising questions about whose cultural aesthetics are legitimized in American art and architecture.

Richard Hunt | Divided Growth, 1986
Richard Hunt's Divided Growth features a firebird-shaped sculpture forged from Cor-Ten steel, symbolizing rebirth and African American resilience. Positioned near Japanese Meiji period artifacts collected by the Nickersons, Hunt’s work critiques the exoticism of non-Western art by reclaiming space for African American narratives rooted in struggle and transformation.

Laleh Motlagh | Threaded Memories, 2024
Laleh Motlagh's Threaded Memories replicates the pattern of a Persian rug using dried leaves from her family’s garden in Iran and from the grounds of the Nickerson Mansion. This fusion of diasporic and local materials forms a visual map of cultural memory, connecting the global migrations that often go unacknowledged in elite spaces like the Nickerson Mansion.

Olivia Block | Lowlands, 2024
Olivia Block’s Lowlands restores the ghostly presence of animals once displayed as taxidermy in the mansion, through an evocative installation that includes audio and visual elements. By recalling these once-living beings reduced to décor, Block critiques the commodification of wildlife and asks viewers to reconsider how memory, death, and spectacle intersect in both human and non-human lives.