Shannon Egan, the new Director of The Trout Gallery, comes to Dickinson from Gettysburg College, where she was the Director of the Schmucker Art Gallery for 16 years. However, she has lived in Carlisle for a long time, and looks forward to being more professionally connected and engaged in the community. Though it is no longer open to the public, she previously co-directed Ejecta Projects art gallery to bring contemporary art exhibitions to Carlisle.
Egan is particularly excited to work with The Trout Gallery’s art collection because of its large breadth, depth, and diversity for our relatively small college. She commended the amazing staff she has begun to work with, including the robust team of students—including 17 paid interns—who are involved with The Trout Gallery; a network like which had previously not been available to her. In addition to learning more and more about the collection itself, in the coming semester Egan is getting to know the network of friends and donors who support The Trout Gallery. Most importantly, she is eager to meet more of the student body of Dickinson and involve them more with the work of The Trout Gallery.
Her primary goal as incoming director is to increase The Trout Gallery’s visibility and accessibility to the student body by continuing the momentum of the Gallery’s internship and Museum Ambassador programs. These programs already draw students from various majors to work with The Trout Gallery, enabling them to hear from a wide range of perspectives and interests from around the community.
Last week, Egan held two coffee events to begin her community outreach and hopes to hold more programs to facilitate student connection with The Trout Gallery, as well as connections between the students and faculty. The Gallery will also continue to hold its Trout Study Days for students during finals week, to provide a quiet and relaxing space where students will be able to study and recharge. Egan emphasized The Trout Gallery as a space that is both social and academic and that builds relationships between people and art.
She is particularly interested in working with faculty and students to creatively and innovatively use the Gallery’s art collection and to support shared interdisciplinary goals across campus. Particularly, Egan recognizes the interest in sustainability held by many students and faculty alike and sees that artwork can be studied through the lens of ecocriticism and engage with larger climate issues. The focus of an upcoming exhibition, Disruptive: Unruly Texts, Provocative Pictures, will be on how works of art that incorporate words and texts into their compositions also address issues of race, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. This year, a large number of faculty are working with Heather Flaherty, Curator of Education at The Trout Gallery, to bring their classes to The Trout Gallery, including various First-Year Seminars and language classes.
Along with more community involvement will come an increase in the student-led facets of The Trout Gallery. One of the upcoming exhibitions, Souvenirs of Ruin: Piranesi and the Birth of Western Tourism, which will open on October 27, is curated by student Emily Angelucci ‘24. Egan hopes to help students access the art collection, think about how art affects political and social change, and encourage them to establish their place in the world.
