Commissioned by the Hudson River Museum, Porcelain Dreams and Gilded Schemes is a site-specific installation by Rachel Sydlowski that reimagines the ornate interiors of the Gilded Age through a critical, contemporary lens.

Drawing imagery from the museum’s historic Glenview home — including its collection of Kangxi Chinese blue-and-white porcelain — the work fuses fabulism with historical critique. Design motifs, liberated from porcelain cups and vases, spill across an upturned parlor room, enveloping visitors in a maximalist space of beauty and chaos.

The installation parallels two eras of grandeur and instability: America's Gilded Age and China's early Qing Dynasty. During the transitional Jingdezhen period, civil war and political turmoil disrupted traditional porcelain production, pushing artisans to create for private and foreign markets. Similarly, the Gilded Age, often celebrated for its opulence, was also a time of rampant greed, corruption, and social upheaval.

By connecting these histories, Porcelain Dreams and Gilded Schemes invites viewers to consider how aesthetics and material excess can simultaneously mask — and reveal — deeper fractures within society.