1983
(Untitled) Villa Celle, Pistoia, Italy 1983

The Villa Celle provided Neuhaus with an important opportunity to engage 'nature' _ that is, nature with a capital 'N'.  Granted, a 19th-century Italian garden laid out on principles established for those of 18th century England is not the most Natural place imaginable. In certain ways, it is as artificial as any site in the middle of Manhattan. Nonetheless, the Villa Celle project offered Neuhaus a challenge he usually doesn't have to face _ that of designing a range of sonorities to play off against an ambience created by insects, rustling leaves and the occasional bird. He was far from Times Square, far from any urban buzz of the kind that has done so much to form his ideas about environment, population, and the ways in which works of art can mediate between the two.

The sound installations, completed in the summer of 1983, is at the Villa Celle, near a small Tuscan city called Pistoia. It is an outdoor work. Dense shrubbery hides sound-generating equipment that Neuhaus actually tucks away beneath metal grills or behind the walls of buildings. Yet the grounds of the Villa Celle are not as different from an urban sculpture garden as they look at first glance. The Villa's glades and lawns provide sites to a number of works by contemporary sculptors; further, this is a picturesque garden laid out in the 19th century with the intention of turning a stretch of terrain into a work of art. Setting aside its physical form for a moment, in order to consider the garden as an art-world institution, one could say that its relationship to the sculpture it contains is much like that of a museum building to the works it exhibits. As a consequence, Neuhaus proceeded much as he often has before.

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Lecture at University of Miami, 1984