Opening November 20, Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles will present CRADLED, an exhibition conceived and curated by artist Suzanne Bocanegra and actor/producer Frances McDormand in collaboration with the Shaker Museum (Chatham NY). Expanding on its 2024 staging in upstate New York, the LA presentation of CRADLED 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. Central to the exhibition are Shaker cradles, crafted for infants and adults alike, designed to provide comfort at life’s beginning and at its end. From their arrival in the United States in 1774 and through more than two centuries of piety, the Shakers’ celibate communities often sheltered more elders than children, thus developing a deeply rooted culture of end-of-life care. Rarely seen beyond traditional Shaker circles, adult-sized cradles, striking in their simplicity, embody the group’s values of compassion, dignity and support at every stage of life.
The exhibition, inspired and informed by Bocanegra’s and McDormand’s research at Shaker Museum, features four of these historic Shaker cradles, on loan from Shaker museums spanning the country, from New England to Kentucky. Each cradle is paired with a tableau of Shaker rocking chairs and woven baskets filled with mending projects, offering visitors an opportunity to take part in the literal and figurative act of mending, an activity at the heart of Shaker values: to sit, to repair, to create.
Honoring the Shakers’ connection between song and caregiving, Bocanegra and McDormand collaborated with composer David Lang and sound editors Skip Lievsay and Paul Umstrom on an end-of-life lullaby that resonates throughout the exhibition. Lang adapted the text for his ‘last lullaby’ from a Shaker spiritual about eternal life.
‘CRADLED’ includes a reproduction of an adult-sized cradle in which special guests will be gently rocked by Bocanegra and McDormand during the opening activation on November 20. That evening, singers from the Los Angeles–based volunteer choir Angeles Chorale will contribute to Lang’s lullaby and the exhibition’s soundscape.
In collaboration with Manuela LA, Shaker Lemon Pie will be served to visitors at the opening. Pies will also be available for purchase and featured on the restaurant’s menu during the run of the exhibition.
Artists’ statement from Frances McDormand and Suzanne Bocanegra:
‘To be cradled, held, supported by one’s community.
From birth to grave.
WITH RESPECT AND CARE.
To be mended by an exchange of trust, loyalty and compassion.
To be honored for one’s contribution to the whole and to believe one is contributing to the sustenance of the future.
The contemplation of these thoughts and possibilities is what we hope to offer you in this space.
TAKE YOUR TIME.
ROCK YOURSELF.
MEND, IF YOU LIKE.
YOU ARE WELCOME.’
