No, the four balls on display outside the Hood Museum are not fallen meteorites or a new-fangled jungle gym.
Street ball, field ball, barn ball and tree ball, one of the Hood Museum's newest installations, were created especially for the museum's "Post-Pastoral: New Images of the New England Landscape" Exhibition, the exhibition's curator Amy Schlegel said.
Street ball was built with concrete and mortar, tree ball consists of bark glued to the outside of a sphere-shaped wooden core and field ball is made of sod, Schlegel said.
She said barn ball, the largest ball, features a stone base supporting a sphere of hand-carved wood designed to look like meld wood. The base and wood are bolted together, and the interior of barn ball is lined with hay.
The balls were intended to reduce each element of the pastoral landscape "to an abstracted symbol," according to a Hood Musuem placard near the balls.
The balls, designed by artist Lars-Erik Fisk, were transported to Hanover with the help of a landscaping firm and were pieced together by Fisk and his collaborators, Schlegel said.
But she said the installation's construction was delayed when someone dislodged field ball from its anchor and rolled it -- causing it to fall apart.
Because of the vandalism, field ball is being displayed in a hemisphere form.
"We expect people are really curious [about the balls]," Schlegel said. "[But] it's pretty obvious they are going to roll if you push them ... We would appreciate it if people didn't touch the work."
Another new installation, the Pine Needle Farmhouse, is also on display outside the Hood Museum.
The farmhouse, designed by artist Bill Botzow and intended to contrast with the museum's post-modern architecture, was created with plywood and pine needles, Schlegel said.
The 30 inch tall farmhouse was decorated with fresh pine needles and reconstructed with a stone foundation when it was moved to Hanover.
