an unedited interview with curator and writer Shana Dumont Garr
It is such a pleasure to interview dear friends, and to have and share a document of friendship like this conversation with Shana Dumont Garr, the former Curator at Fruitlands Museum. Fruitlands was founded by blueblood-mystic-folklorist-fuddyduddy Clara Endicott Sears, and the museum interprets, among other things, the Alcott family’s 19th c. utopian experiment and the Shaker community of Harvard-Shirley. Sears also collected - sometimes without consent, which is stealing, not collecting - Native American objects, which are held and exhibited at Fruitlands, too.
Bringing contemporary art and humane, future-reaching interpretation into this setting was Shana’s work for five years. You can check out her exhibitions Unseen Hours: Space Clearing for Spirit Work, Piecework: Resistance and Healing, Speaking of the Future: Utopia Press, Recruiting for Utopia: Print and the Imagination, and Decolonized Map of Massachusetts; she also co-curated the New England Triennial which is on view now at Fruitlands and the deCordova Museum.
Shana talks so candidly and fluidly about her work, her process of self-discovery, and her journey both as a curator and as a woman. It follows naturally from my conversation with Adrian Shirk, another thinker about utopia. Enjoy!
it's an intuitive process: Shana Dumont Garr