In June 2025 deCordova opens Nature Sanctuary, an outdoor exhibition that explores relationships between the natural world and ideas of home. Spanning the Sculpture Park’s front lawn and beyond, this exhibition features original, site-inspired commissions and loans by six women artists: Venetia Dale, Kapwani Kiwanga, Joiri Minaya, Zohra Opoku, Kathy Ruttenberg, and Evelyn Rydz.

The artworks of Nature Sanctuary express refuge, care, and shared protective relationship between humans and the natural world.   Through their work, these artists consider past, present, and future ramifications of climate change, as well as deeper histories of land use and the migration of people, plants, and animals across homelands. Their projects also reveal contradictions inherent to a “nature sanctuary” and expose how the exclusion or displacement of living beings has been justified to protect the natural world.

Nature Sanctuary is framed by deCordova’s former identity as a family home and the museum’s present-day integration within The Trustees. As Massachusetts’ largest and the nation’s first conservation and preservation nonprofit, The Trustees protects more than 120 special places, as well as countless plants and animals. The exhibition deepens awareness of deCordova’s “more than human” landscape and its unique ecological and geological features. Programming and interpretation led by environmental caretakers will center these interconnections of art and place.

Organized by Sarah Montross, Museum Director and Chief Curator

Exhibition support generously provided by the Artist’s Resource Trust of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Bolotnick Seaver Family Foundation, Nathaniel Saltonstall Arts Fund, Next Generation Fund of the Roy A. Hunt Foundation, Linda Hammett Ory and Andrew Ory Charitable Trust, Jo Goldman, Marjorie D. and Nicolas P. Greville, Holly and Roger Ketron, Mary Levin Koch, Kathleen O’Hara, Caroline and Jeffrey Paduch, Patrick and Pamela Pedonti, and Sophie Vandebroek and Jesus del Alamo.