& Olana State Historic Site
June 14 – November 2, 2025
Ellen Harvey and Gabriela Salazar
Commissioned by The Olana Partnership

Olana is the most intact historic artist’s environment in the United States, encompassing the Main House and its extensive collections, an historic farm complex, and the 250-acre naturalistic landscape designed by Frederic Church between 1860 and 1900. Despite its remarkable state of preservation, several of Olana’s extant structures dating to Church’s time were removed years prior to Olana becoming a National Historic Landmark and New York State Historic Site. In these structures’ absence, stories of the people who built and used them and the functions they served have also been lost. Visible foundations and archaeological evidence survive for some of these missing structures. In other cases, only photographs, maps, or oral histories bear witness to their past existence. These buildings may have vanished, but their stories remain embedded within Olana’s landscape.

For What’s Missing?, The Olana Partnership commissioned artists Ellen Harvey and Gabriela Salazar to create site-specific outdoor artworks that respond to these missing pieces of Olana’s landscape history. Harvey’s project, Winter in the Summer House, activates the site of Olana’s “summer house,” a structure for which no physical evidence remains apart from a label on a 1886 landscape plan of Olana just below the Main House. Harvey’s installation takes the form of a hexagonal gazebo constructed entirely of gold-framed mirrors reflecting views of Olana’s landscape and viewshed, allowing the public to inhabit the role of the artist and compose their own views. The mirrors are engraved on the rear with an icy landscape of melting glaciers and protest signs based on a meticulous full-size drawing by Harvey. When visitors enter the structure, the drawing is made suddenly visible by the sunlight filtering through the engraved lines. These engravings serve both as an homage to Church’s famous paintings of icebergs (several of which can be found hidden in the engraving) and a commentary on the effect of climate change.  Winter in the Summer House was inaugurated with a Summer Solstice ritual performed by Dannielle Tegeder of Hilma’s Ghost.

Entrance to Olana is free. Winter in the Summer House is located a short walk downhill from the Historic House.  

Winter in the Summer House, Ellen Harvey, 2025. Laser-engraved Plexiglas mirrors, vintage frames, wooden framework. 17ft diameter, 22 ft height. Photographs: Ellen Harvey.