Boston, MA – September 19, 2016 – The Trustees of Reservations is pleased to announce that curator, arts writer, and educator Shana Dumont Garr has joined the organization as Curator at Fruitlands Museum. Before joining The Trustees, Shana was the Director of the Kingston Gallery in Boston. In her role as Curator at Fruitlands, Shana will be overseeing the care of the collections, helping drive an upcoming collection inventory, and managing/curating the exhibits and artist-in-residence programs.

“We are thrilled to have Shana join our curatorial team,” says Joanna Ballantine, Trustees’ Vice President for the Western Region. “Shana’s dual background in art history and material culture will be an important asset for her working with Fruitlands Museum’s diverse and important collections. In addition, her connections with the Boston and the national contemporary arts scene will be a significant resource for the site and The Trustees as we work to grow our impact as a leading conservation, preservation, and cultural institution in Massachusetts and beyond.”

Shana has extensive curatorial, exhibit, and engagement experience, with time spent at Artspace in Raleigh, NC; the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, NC; the Montserrat Art Gallery in Beverly, MA; and the Hurst Gallery in Cambridge, MA—to name a few. In these roles, she has curated/organized over 100 exhibits, and worked with a wide range of public, donor, and academic audiences. She is committed to making museums and the arts more accessible, and to this end, has worked as a freelancer arts writer and adjunct faculty member.

Most recently, Shana served as the Director of the Kingston Gallery in Boston, a newly-created position implemented in order to increase the profile of this artist-run alternative space that was founded in 1982. She was recruited for this role on the strength of her existing relationships with key artist members and experience administering, curating, and writing about contemporary art.

Prior to joining Kingston Gallery, Shana was the Director of Programs & Exhibitions at Artspace in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she curated and organized 30+ on-site and off-site exhibitions and residency programs with emerging and established, regional and nationally-based artists. During her tenure, she revised the artist selection methods and created themes to unify the seasonal offerings and effectively increase the artistic caliber of exhibitions and align aesthetics, educational programs, and partnerships; wrote 12 exhibition essays each year; expanded exhibition publications by introducing a viewer’s guide to further Artspace’s mission to provide wide access to fine arts; and cultivated partnerships with area non-profits to support artists and increase community outreach.

Before that, Shana served Assistant to the Director at the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Assistant Director and Assistant Curator for the Montserrat College of Art Gallery, and Gallery Manager for the Hurst Gallery in Cambridge.

Shana has contributed articles, interviews and reviews to the online arts publications Big Red & Shiny, Burnaway (based in Atlanta, GA), New American Paintings Blog, and the International Review of African American Art, among others. She has also taught classes in Art History and Contemporary Art at Montserrat College of Art, the Art Institute of Raleigh Durham, and Raleigh Institute of Contemporary Art (RICA).

A graduate of Colby College in Waterville, ME with a dual-degree in English and Art, Shana also holds a masters degree in Art History from Boston University. She lives in Acton with her husband, son, two stepchildren, and dog.

About Fruitlands Museum & The Trustees

Fruitlands Museum, a 210-acre historic, natural, and cultural destination based in Harvard, MA, recently became a property of The Trustees of Reservations. Founded in 1914 by author and preservationist Clara Endicott Sears, the Museum takes its name from an experimental utopian community led by Transcendentalists Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane that existed on this site in 1843. Fruitlands is dedicated to New England history & art, and its properties include: The Fruitlands Farmhouse, once home to the family of Louisa May Alcott and a National Historic landmark; The Shaker Museum, home to the largest archive of Harvard Shaker documents in the world; The Native American Museum, which houses a significant collection of artifacts that honor the spiritual presence and cultural history of the first Americans; The Art Museum, featuring a renowned collection of Hudson River School landscape paintings and 19th century vernacular portraits, along with rotating special exhibitions; and The Land, which features panoramic views of the Nashua River Valley, including 2.5 miles of meadows and woodland recreational trails. The Fruitlands Museum Store sells fine crafts by local artists, including pottery, glass, jewelry, clothing and home furnishings. The Museum Café, open during the main season focuses on locally-sourced, sustainable cuisine reflective of the heritage of New England. www.fruitlands.org.

The Trustees preserves and cares for some of the best of Massachusetts’ natural, scenic, and cultural sites for the public to use and enjoy. The organization’s passion is to engage more people in culture, agriculture, nature, and healthy, active lifestyles, using its properties, its community spaces, and it’s many programs as a powerful and compelling platform to connect people to places and each other in our increasingly digitized world.  As the Commonwealth’s largest conservation and preservation organization and the nation’s first land trust founded in 1891, The Trustees celebrates its 125th Anniversary this year and continues its work in protecting the irreplaceable for everyone, forever.  Today, The Trustees cares for 116 spectacular and diverse reservations spanning more than 26,000 acres— from working farms, landscaped and urban gardens, and community parks, to barrier beaches, forests, campgrounds, inns and historic sites, many of which are National Historic Landmarks — located within minutes of every resident. Funded by more than 125,000 members and supporters and 1.6 million visitors in 2015, The Trustees invites you to get out, get inspired, and find magic in the moment at a Trustees property near you: www.thetrustees.org.

For more information contact:

Nina J Berger, Fruitlands Museum, ninajberger@gmail.com

Kristi Perry, Trustees PR Director, kperry@thetrustees.org