Nationally recognized artists Janine Antoni and Jonathan Berger reflect on how encountering the Shakers —a 250-year-old Christian sect of pacifists who value the importance of “attempting to live an extraordinary life” as ordinary individuals—has influenced them in the studio and beyond. The artists will be joined in conversation by  Brother Arnold Hadd of Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine— one of two practicing Shakers in the United States. Jeffrey De Blois, the ICA’s Mannion Family Curator and organizer of Believers: Artists and the Shakers, will moderate this timely conversation on art, life, and community. A reception immediately follows the speaking portion of this program.  

Make the most of your ICA visit!  Explore the galleries and visit the ICA’s featured exhibition: Believers: Artists and the Shakers.  

Ticketing information to come!

About the Artists

Janine Antoni is a visual artist born in Freeport, Bahamas. She received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Antoni is known for her unusual processes. Her body is both her tool for making and the source from which her meaning arises. Antoni’s early work transformed materials like chocolate and soap, and she has used everyday activities like bathing, eating, and sleeping as sculptural processes. She carefully articulates her relationship to the world, giving rise to emotional states that are felt in and through the senses.  

Antoni’s work has been shown nationally and internationally and is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Art Institute of Chicago; among others.  

Antoni is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship in 1998, the New Media Award from the ICA/Boston, and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2011.

Jonathan Berger is an artist whose practice investigates three primary concerns: the archive as a constantly changing and living entity; the repurposing of the exhibition site, and how ideas and content are cross-pollinated therein; and collaboration as a shared experience of trust and belief. Berger’s intensive investment in creative communities has enabled him to create a web of relationships which, due to the collaborative nature of all of his work, threads together a diverse and wide-ranging group of participants. 
 
Berger has been featured in solo installations around the world, including the Carpenter Center for the Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Busan Biennial, South Korea; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; Participant Inc., New York; Frieze Projects, London; and most recently, the Aspen Art Museum. His collaborative and curatorial projects have been presented at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and The Queens Museum of Art, New York. Part of Berger’s An Introduction to Nameless Love was on view in The Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet As It’s Kept, in New York. He is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art Professions at New York University, and he lives and works in New York City and Glover, Vermont. T.Tic

Believers: Artists and the Shakers is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Mannion Family Curator, with Tessa Bachi Haas, Assistant Curator.