Photo of Frances McDormand and Suzanne Bocanegra from the CRADLED installation in Kinderhook, NY, 2024 © Kristen Tomkowid
Artists Frances McDormand and Suzanne Bocanegra are expanding on their 2024 collaboration with Shaker Museum to present CRADLED at Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles. The LA presentation explores – through objects, sound and activations – the Shakers’ embrace of caregiving and community from cradle to grave. CRADLED invites visitors into an environment where they are immersed, however briefly, in a vision of life shaped by the Shaker ethos of devotion made manifest in communal
industry and care.
Presented by Make Hauser & Wirth, the gallery’s platform for contemporary makers and engagement in the handmade, CRADLED will be on view Saturdays and Sundays through January 4, 2026.
Read more about the exhibition at the Hauser & Wirth website.
Read more about CRADLED (2024) here.
Collections Manager
Sharon Duane Koomler is a Shaker scholar and traditional letterpress printer living in upstate New York. She has academic degrees in American Folklore from Indiana University and Western Kentucky University. Sharon has worked at Shaker Museums from Kentucky to New Hampshire as an educator, curator, consultant, and director. She has written and published on Shaker material culture and spirituality, and lectured widely on Shaker art, life, and belief. Sharon has a particular interest in the under-researched social aspects of Shaker life and ways in which Shakers practiced inclusion and intentionality.