BOSTON, Mass. – This summer, The Trustees of Reservations will launch its first-ever multi-site Art and the Landscape outdoor exhibition, bringing together three New England artists in a shared exploration of art and place. The Land Tells Our Stories will unfold across multiple Trustees’ landscapes in Massachusetts with installations opening on June 1. The Land Tells Our Stories will be on view until Oct. 31.
Through site-responsive installations, the artists featured in The Land Tells Our Stories explore themes of belonging, environmental change, cultural storytelling, and the layered ways landscapes hold and reveal generational memory. The installations will appear at Castle Hill on the Crane Estate in Ipswich, Moose Hill Farm in Sharon, and Rock House Reservation in West Brookfield. A process gallery at Fruitlands Museum will bring the work and ideas of these three artists into dialogue together.
Curated by Tess Lukey (Aquinnah Wampanoag), Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Trustees of Reservations, the exhibition features new installations by artists Posey Moulton, May Babcock, and Ella Mahoney.
“With The Land Tells Our Stories, I wanted to invite artists to engage directly with the landscapes that have shaped so much of Massachusetts’ cultural and environmental history. Each artist approached their site as both a source of inspiration and a collaborator, responding to the land’s ecology, histories, and layered meanings. By bringing contemporary art into these distinct landscapes, we hope to open space for reflection, dialogue, and a deeper connection to the places we steward” says Lukey.
“The Trustees began its celebrated Art and the Landscape initiative in 2016, inviting artists to develop site-inspired commissions at Trustees properties across the state. Now in its tenth year, we are proud to be evolving this series by working with multiple artists across several Trustees properties for this iteration.” shared Sarah Montross, Museum Director and Chief Curator, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.
At Castle Hill in Ipswich, Second Wind by Maine-based artist Posey Moulton rises on a hillside overlooking the neighboring Great Marsh – the largest saltwater marsh in New England that is now threatened by sea level rise, climate change, and development. Responding to this dynamic landscape of tidal creeks and architectural wonder, the work features motifs from the scallop shell reliefs of Castle Hill to the ornate ironwork of the Crane Estate’s Italian Garden. Lace-like steelwork, a gold-leafed tidal creek, and sculpted sea wrack surround the fan-shaped form, inviting visitors to pass through, pause, and reflect. Moulton’s work builds imaginative, participatory worlds that invite collective creation. Her large-scale, tactile installations transform everyday materials into immersive environments that inspire curiosity, connection, and environmental awareness. Her practice thrives at the intersection of sculpture, performance, and social engagement.
Moose Hill Farm is home to rare, wild American chestnut trees – once abundant across eastern North America, are now nearly extinct due to a century-old blight. For Seaside Chestnuts, May Babock, a multiracial artist of Taiwanese-Chinese descent based in Pawtucket, R.I., envisions an installation of 11 Chestnut trees – American, Chinese, and hybrid varieties provided by The American Chestnut Foundation. Each young tree will be encircled by seaweed-like sculptural “protectors” made from farm fencing and locally gathered papermaking plants from the surrounding landscape. These forms both shelter the saplings as they grow and evoke nearby coastal ecologies, referencing the fact that this Trustees landscape lies along a projected future coastline should polar ice caps fully melt. Babcock says she sees kinship in these resilient hybrids that are symbols of survival, regeneration, and future ecologies. As an interdisciplinary artist whose work engages papermaking as a relational practice shaped by land, water, and time, Babcock draws connections between ecologies shaped by displacement and adaptation, finding resonance between human histories and the migration of plants across continents.
Ella Mahoney’s Moshup’s Hand responds to the dramatic cave-like rock formations of Rock House Reservation, a landscape shaped over millennia by glacial movement and geological upheaval. Mahoney’s recent work features large-scale silk installations that evoke the movement and memory of Northeastern coastal environments. Suspended across the massive stone enclosure, the silk-based sculpture invites visitors to walk beneath it and look upward, as if witnessing Moshup – the great being of Wampanoag people and neighboring tribal oral tradition – reaching across the land. Composed of three sculptural elements – the hand, the ripple, and the rays – the work brings light, movement, and sounds into dialogue with this natural shelter. Through this environmentally sensitive installation, Mahoney, who is Aquinnah Wampanoag, honors the enduring Native presence embedded in the land, revealing stories and sovereignties that colonial histories have long tried to erase. Mahoney lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Aquinnah, Mass.
“Working with Ella Mahoney on this installation at Rock House Reservation has been especially meaningful to me because we both come from the Aquinnah Wampanoag community,” says curator Tess Lukey. “Ella brings a perspective rooted in lived cultural knowledge and shared memory, and her work invites visitors to pause and reconsider the stories often attached to this landscape. Through her installation, she creates space for the enduring presence and voices of the Wampanoag people to be felt here — reminding us that the land carries histories far deeper and more complex than many of us were taught. As a curator, it’s powerful to see an artist from our own community shaping how these stories are held, shared, and experienced in this place.”
At Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, the Seasonal Gallery will offer visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the development of The Land Tells Our Stories. Sketches, material studies, research images, and process documentation will reveal how each artist approached their site and translated ideas about place into installation. The gallery will also feature a short documentary film about the project, offering visitors an opportunity to hear directly from the artists as they reflect on their shared exploration of landscape, history, and storytelling, and discuss the creative decisions that shaped the works installed across the Trustees’ properties.
The Land Tells Our Stories is commissioned by Art and The Landscape, an initiative of The Trustees. Art and 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.
Lead support for Art at The Trustees is provided by Rich and Gabrielle Coffman, Jo Goldman, Marjorie and Nicholas Greville, Patrick Pedonti and Pamela Pedonti, Janet and David Offensend, Kathleen O’Hara, Diana and McKelden Smith, Valentine Talland and Nagesh Mahanthappa, and Dr. Sophie V. Vandebroek and Dr. Jesus del Alamo. Additional support for Moshup’s Hand is provided by The Coby Foundation, Ltd. In-kind support for Seaside Chestnuts is provided by the American Chestnut Foundation.
About The Trustees
The Trustees is Massachusetts’ largest—and the nation’s first—land conservation and preservation nonprofit. Today, through the support of Members, donors, and partners, The Trustees helps conserve nearly 52,000 acres and welcomes the public to more than 120 inspiring locations across the state to experience landscapes where nature, wildlife, and people all thrive.
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