By Dirk Langeveld

WESTPORT — An upcoming exhibition at MoCA\CT will focus on beloved local places that no longer exist, and the museum is requesting submissions to help an artist recreate some of these sites on canvas.

Residents of Darien, Fairfield, Greenwich, New Canaan, Norwalk, Ridgefield, Stamford, Weston, Westport, and Wilton are being invited to submit landmarks, neighborhoods, or gathering spots that have been lost over time due to demolition, disasters, or other causes. Artist Ellen Harvey will select four of these submissions to feature in her exhibition, The Disappointed Tourist, in which she reimagines sites that have vanished. The exhibition will be on view at MoCA\CT from June 25th to August 2nd.

Submissions can be made at disappointedtourist.org. Submissions must be made by April 25th.

The Disappointed Tourist began in 2019, and more than 400 people from over 30 countries have participated in the project. Harvey has completed more than 300 paintings of lost sites, all of which can be searched on the project’s website.

To date, Harvey has recreated two lost Connecticut sites. One depicts the New Haven Coliseum, a sports and entertainment venue demolished in 2007. The other showcases Ghost Parking Lot, a public artwork in Hamden that was removed in 2003.

The project takes its inspiration from old postcards as well as tourist painting, a pre-photographic tradition where wealthy tourists commissioned a painting of a landmark to commemorate their visit. Using the submissions as a guide, Harvey paints 24-by-18-inch works in monochrome acrylics with oil glazes on wood panels.

Each painting includes the name of the site and the date of its destruction. The installation always includes unfinished works, since the project is “necessarily incomplete.”

Harvey says that while most of the submissions are made to recall happy memories, people have also used the project to “call attention to the impact of conflict, inequality, and climate change or to memorialize important places.” Contributors’ stories are included on the website for The Disappointed Tourist.

“The Disappointed Tourist is inspired by the urge to repair what has been broken,” Harvey’s artist statement reads in part. “It makes symbolic restitution, literally remaking lost sites, at the same time that it acknowledges the inadequacy of such restitution.” 

A British-born artist, Harvey has often employed viewer-centered strategies in her exhibitions. In another ongoing project, The Utopia Machine, she asks people to submit ideas for what would make this world a utopia, then creates patent drawings to illustrate these ideas.

Dirk Langeveld

^{_{Dirk Langeveld has worked as a news reporter, content marketing specialist, and freelance writer. He is the author of “The Artful Dodger: The 20-Year Pursuit of World War I Draft Dodger Grover Cleveland Bergdoll” and has contributed to several books on Connecticut history.}}