The Land Tells Our Stories brings together three New England artists—May Babcock, Ella Mahoney, and Posey Moulton—whose site-responsive artworks installed at three Trustees properties explore belonging, environmental change, cultural storytelling, and the ways landscapes carry generational memory.

The Seasonal Gallery at Fruitlands Museum is included as part of The Land Tells Our Stories as a way to bring these artists’ ideas and processes into conversation with one another and to deepen their exploration of place, history, and storytelling. We invite you into this gallery and then to visit the other special places—Moose Hill Farm (May Babcock), Rock House Reservation (Ella Mahoney), and Castle Hill on the Crane Estate (Posey Moulton)—where their outdoor installations are on view.

These artists’ works invite viewers to encounter familiar places with fresh attention, tuning in to the land’s textures, silences, and layered histories. Rooted in the principles of placemaking, the exhibition reimagines public outdoor spaces as sites of connection between artists, communities, and the environments that shape identity. Placemaking is a community-centered process and philosophy that uses urban design to shape public spaces in ways that reflect place identity and support health, well-being, and urban vitality. Here, placemaking becomes an act of cultural affirmation. At a time of global crisis and increasing disconnection from the natural world, The Land Tells Our Stories offers placemaking as a path toward healing, inclusion, and “placekeeping”: not only preserving land, but sustaining the people, histories, and meaning it holds.

The Land Tells Our Stories is commissioned by Art & The Landscape, an initiative of The Trustees. Now in its tenth year, Art & The Landscape commissions are site-specific, designed to help tell the story of treasured places of the Trustees and tie together threads of art, nature, community, and history.

The Land Tells Our Stories is curated by Tess Lukey, Associate Curator of Native American Art, and organized by The Trustees and staff of deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

Lead support for Art at The Trustees is provided by Jo Goldman, Mr. Patrick J. Pedonti and Mrs. Pamela C. Pedonti, Janet and David Offensend, and Dr. Sophie V. Vandebroek and Dr. Jesus del Alamo.  Additional support for Moshup’s Hand is provided by The Coby Foundation, Ltd.