Gabrielle Richardson—art-world princess, friend of Elephant, and better known to her Instagram followers as @fridacashflow—gives us a photo diary from her visit to Aspen Art Museum’s AIR Festival.
Figures in a Landscape, the title for the 2026 AIR festival, mixes internationally recognized museum artists alongside filmmakers, poets, composers, performers, and writers. Visitors can lie in the grasslands for a site-specific screening of Lucy Raven’s Murderers Bar, gather in the chapel for an organ-accompanied poetry reading by Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis, and be led into the mountains the next morning for a sunrise performance by Los Thutanaka. The commissioned works extended far beyond the walls of the Aspen Art Museum, with the surrounding landscape becoming an active participant.
I wept throughout Kali Malone’s performance in the Aspen Chapel, as she played on the newly restored pipe organ within the Aspen Chapel. An organ that sat unused for over 20 years and was repaired by the Aspen Art Museum for the US premiere of Concentric Circles of The Choirs of Angels. This renovation will live long after the performance. AIR 2026 Figures in a Landscape questions how we relate to landscapes physically, sociologically, ecologically, and spiritually. With commissions and discussion led programming, the festival aims to glean into the relationship between humans and the natural world, but also the idyllic landscape of Aspen.
All photos from the iPhone of Gabrielle Richardson.
