Shana Dumont Garr is a contemporary and nineteenth-century American art curator, writer, and educator based in Greater Boston. She is a professor at Emerson College in the Visual and Media Arts Department and an assistant curator of special projects and campus engagement at Emerson Contemporary, an academic gallery specializing in media art.
Shana is a student in art and philosophy at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, midway through the program and focusing her research on how spirituality, religion, and technology impact relationships with memory, the land, and each other in the context of climate collapse.
Shana was the Curator of Fruitlands Museum in Harvard from 2016 to 2022, concluding her role there by co-curating the New England Triennial with Sarah Montross, Chief Curator at deCordova Sculpture Park + Museum. At Fruitlands, Shana curated exhibitions with the permanent collection of American, nineteenth-century art, and expanded the artist-in-residence program to prominence by bringing artists including Greg Lookerse, Jon Gitelson, Jane Marsching, Maria Molteni, Andrew Mowbray, Sue McNally, and Kirsten Lamb.
Previously Shana served as the director of Kingston Gallery, the Director of exhibitions and programs at Artspace in Raleigh, NC, and held roles at the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, NC, and the Montserrat College of Art Gallery and Visiting Artist Program in Beverly, MA. She earned her MA in Art History from Boston University, and her BA in Creative Writing and Art from Colby College in Waterville, ME, and she is currently working on her PhD in art theory, and philosophy from IDSVA.