ABOUT SARAH
Bio
Sarah Hutt is a Boston-based sculptor, public art consultant and seasoned arts and community advocate.
Photo: Lisa Kessler
Sarah Hutt’s project-based mixed media sculptural artwork focuses on memory, dreams and the ever-changing reality they create. Often incorporating everyday objects and language, the works comprising projects such as Daily Diary and My Mother’s Legacy access the universal through the portal of the autobiographical. Many pieces invite audience participation through interactive content. Since 1994 Hutt has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions throughout the country at venues including Boston Sculptors Gallery, Bucknell University, Indianapolis Art Center, Portsmouth Museum of Fine Arts, New Mexico State University, Boston Center for the Arts, The Art Complex Museum, Harvard University, Edward Hopper Museum and the Boulder MoCA. She has received press in publications such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Art New England, Architectural Week, Glasstire and The Seattle Times. She has been awarded numerous artist residencies and grants, including a MacDowell residency, a Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant and Massachusetts Cultural Council and New England Foundation for the Arts sculpture fellowships. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Boston Public Library, DeCordova Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Simmons University and the McMullen Museum of Art.
Hutt maintains a Boston studio. She graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) and was awarded a Fifth Year Competition Fellowship. She subsequently completed graduate-level studies in public art and arts management at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the University of Massachusetts.
In addition to her own studio practice, Hutt has more than 25 years of experience championing artists, community and culture through arts advocacy and administration. Her own experiences as an artist informs her advocacy work. As the former Director of Visual Arts for the City of Boston created the first programs for individual artists in Boston, co-creating the Emerging Artist Grant Program, curating the City Hall art gallery, establishing the Boston Open Studios Coalition (which served 14 neighborhood art associations) and co-creating the city's artist housing policy, which included changes in zoning codes and in the commercial tax structure.
In 2007 she began working with the Friends of the Public Garden, a partner with the Boston Parks Department, to maintain the Boston Public Garden, Boston Common and Commonwealth Avenue Mall. Hutt created the first comprehensive conservation plan to oversee the care and preservation of the collection’s 44 sculptures — statues, fountains and commemorative plaques, including such iconic works as the Brewer Fountain and Make Way for Ducklings. The plan is a model for maintaining large public art collections.
Hutt currently makes her expertise and experience available as a consultant in the areas of public art and arts advocacy. Taking on both long-term as well as more targeted consulting engagements, she advises developers on master plans for including public art in new developments, creates maintenance masterplans for private and public art collections, facilitates development of economic opportunities for visual artists, coordinates temporary public art projects, and creates collaborations between individual artists and community organizations that stimulate cultural development. As a long-time resident of Boston’s South End neighborhood, Hutt was a key player in establishing the first successful mixed-use artist live/work building utilizing a surplus city-owned building in 1990 and has since consulted on more than a dozen similar projects around the country.
Hutt also shares her expertise and experience in a wide variety of ways in addition to consulting. Her writing has been published in such publications as Art Papers, Boston Art Review, Big Red and Shiny and ArtsMedia. She has served as a panelist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Boston's Asian CDC, Boston Society of Architects, New England Foundation for the Arts, School of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Cambridge Art Council. She has been a visiting artist and lecturer to numerous museums, galleries and organizations throughout the country, has taught at several Boston-area colleges and art schools, leads public art tours, and has sat on numerous boards of directors and community advisory groups.