Palm to Poplar: Devotional Labor - by Caitlin MacBride

Exhibition open:
Saturday, February 3 – Sunday, April 28, 2024

Kinderhook Knitting Mill
8 Hudson St., Kinderhook, NY 12016

Shaker Museum announces its first 2024 exhibition, Palm to Poplar: Devotional Labor, coming to the pop-up gallery at the Kinderhook Knitting Mill. This exhibition, featuring the work of artist and educator Caitlin MacBride, will run from Saturday, February 3, through Sunday, April 28, 2024.

Caitlin MacBride is known for work that explores the connection between art and everyday life, engaging material culture and artifacts in an examination of labor and desire. In Palm to Poplar, Shaker Museum will showcase MacBride’s paintings of Shaker objects, providing visitors with a fresh perspective on these common, yet historically significant items. Her work will be displayed alongside pieces from Shaker Museum’s archive that have inspired her, creating a dialogue between the past and the present, the material and the ephemeral.

Caitlin has been interested in the Shakers since 2017, when she began reading about and researching Shaker furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection: “I was initially struck by how many artists had collected Shaker objects and began looking into the influence the Shakers had on American modernism. Yet, as I looked deeper, I found a connection to my own personal history. Growing up in rural working-class New England my love of art began as a love of making things with my hands – learning to invent and create objects that felt useful and beautiful. Learning about the Shakers helped fill in a gap I felt like I’d missed in art history. Specifically American history, where utopian ideals and progressive experiments could coexist beside outsider spirituality and immaculate craftsmanship. Art is always most interesting to me when it embodies what others might see as contradictions. I felt like I’d found my artistic lineage when I found the Shakers.”

Shaker Museum Executive Director Lacy Schutz said, “We are thrilled to have Caitlin MacBride as co-curator for this exhibition. Caitlin has coupled her keen eye for the Shakers’ remarkable history and culture with her striking paintings. Palm to Poplar is an auspicious start to 2024 and Shaker Museum’s exhibitions.