On an October morning in New Canaan, the River building bends gracefully through meadows and trees, a silver ribbon of glass and steel unfurling across 80 acres of open landscape. Designed by the Japanese architecture firm SANAA, the structure seems less built than breathed into being — part transparency, part invitation. When it opened in 2015, Grace Farms was not simply another cultural center. It was conceived as a place where architecture could dissolve boundaries, where art could sharpen moral vision, and where community could become a living experiment in grace and peace.
Ten years later, nearly a million people have walked through its glass-enclosed spaces, taken in concerts framed by the changing seasons, joined nature walks across rolling hills, or sat with a cup of tea while conversations about justice, faith, or design unspooled around them. As Grace Farms begins its 10th anniversary season this fall, it does so with the confidence of an institution that has already made a mark — and the ambition of one still just beginning.
“We all build,” is the theme of this anniversary year, and the phrase is no accident. It signals both construction and community, both the tangible and the aspirational. Sharon Prince, Grace Farms’ CEO and founder, calls it a reminder that the future requires collaboration across sectors, disciplines, and generations. “As we celebrate this milestone and launch a full year of dynamic programming,” Prince said, “we look forward to the boundless possibilities that lie ahead — a future where Grace Farms will continue to build upon these hopeful ten years and bring people together to create a more sustainable and equitable world.”
The season stretching from September 2025 through May 2026 is as robust as any the foundation has mounted. It will feature some of the world’s most celebrated performers, a new lecture series pairing visionary thinkers with specially curated concerts, nature and wellness activities, and the unveiling of a permanent sculpture by Alicja Kwade. At its center is a sense of celebration, but also of continuation — the recognition that the first decade has laid groundwork for decades to come.
A Celebration Day to Remember
The heart of the anniversary season comes on October 11, 2025, when Grace Farms will open its doors for an all-day, ticketed celebration. The morning and early afternoon will allow visitors to “encounter, experience, and explore” Grace Farms, from new art installations to guided nature walks. Guests can taste Grace Farms Tea, listen to pop-up talks about architecture and landscape, and hear music performed in the Plaza by Canadian cellist and artist-in-residence Arlen Hlusko.
In the afternoon, the day turns toward reflection and performance. A centerpiece conversation will reunite Sharon Prince with Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA, who designed the River building, in dialogue with architect Toshihiro Oki. Their discussion will revisit how architecture can embody values and invite the public to inhabit space differently. The event culminates in a performance by Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell, alongside music in the Sanctuary by Hlusko, whose work at Grace Farms has helped weave together art and community.
The celebration concludes with a sunset benefit dinner in the Commons, with a culinary experience guided by Peter Callahan, known for reimagining food as artful, participatory design.
It is a day designed to remind participants of the multiple dimensions of Grace Farms: art, architecture, nature, justice, and faith. Each dimension has its own programs, but together they form the essence of what Grace Farms has become.
A Sculpture for Permanence
One of the most visible milestones of the season will be the unveiling of ParaPosition (2024), a new permanent sculpture by Alicja Kwade. The work, comprised of interlocking steel frames supporting two boulders and an inverted bronze chair, explores balance and fragility, gravity and imagination. Kwade, known internationally for works that question perception and reality, joins a distinguished list of artists with site-specific pieces permanently on view at Grace Farms, including Beatriz Milhazes, Teresita Fernández, and Thomas Demand.
Set against the meadows and skies of New Canaan, ParaPosition is more than a new acquisition. It is a statement of intent: that Grace Farms will continue to be a place where art and landscape merge, and where contemporary artists can challenge audiences to reconsider the structures — both literal and metaphorical — that shape their lives.
The Grace Farms Lectures: A New Forum for Visionaries
If ParaPosition is the season’s boldest visual gesture, the new Grace Farms Lectures may be its most ambitious intellectual one. Launching in January 2026, the series will bring together leaders who have shaped public life through ideas, scholarship, and creativity. Each lecture will be paired with a 60-minute concert curated by Hlusko, with selections chosen to respond to the life’s work of the speaker.
On January 10, Sharon Prince herself will inaugurate the series with a lecture on creating spaces that catalyze good in the world. In February, Yale scholar Miroslav Volf, founding director of the Center for Faith & Culture, will bring his deep engagement with theology and society. In March, Robin Wall Kimmerer, botanist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass, will reflect on indigenous knowledge and ecological interdependence.
By intertwining lecture and concert, Grace Farms hopes to create not simply an intellectual exchange, but an experience — one where music and words resonate together, reinforcing the speaker’s vision. It is programming that embodies Grace Farms’ founding ethos: that beauty and thought, spirit and structure, are never separate domains but mutually reinforcing forces.
Music in the Sanctuary
Music has always been one of Grace Farms’ most distinctive offerings, and the anniversary season underscores why. The Sanctuary, a glass-enclosed space overlooking the landscape, turns every performance into a dialogue between sound and setting.
The season’s roster is extraordinary:
Yo-Yo Ma, the world’s most celebrated cellist and a 19-time Grammy winner, will appear on January 11 with pianist Solon Gordon.
Joshua Bell, already featured at the anniversary celebration, returns with another performance later in the season.
Dianne Reeves, Grammy-winning jazz singer, brings her voice to the Sanctuary on April 18.
Arlen Hlusko, whose residency has shaped much of Grace Farms’ music programming, will take the stage in February with a solo concert.
Add to this seasonal traditions like Songs of the Season in December, collaborations with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and family-centered concerts, and the calendar becomes a testament to how deeply music runs through Grace Farms’ identity.
With Every Fiber: Reimagining Architecture with Fair Labor
Alongside celebration, the anniversary season deepens Grace Farms’ humanitarian work through a new iteration of With Every Fiber, opening October 11. The exhibition explores forced labor in the building materials supply chain — a subject at the core of Grace Farms’ Design for Freedom initiative, launched by Prince in 2020.
This year’s installation includes commissioned works from artist John Sabraw, architect Nina Cooke John, London-based Webb Yates Engineers, and artist Hannah Rose Thomas, whose life-size portrait of modern slavery survivor Nasreen Sheikh will anchor the show. The London Philharmonic Orchestra is contributing a new commissioned score.
Chelsea Thatcher, Grace Farms’ chief strategic officer and curator of the exhibit, describes the design as an experiment in circularity: materials from past exhibitions are repurposed, ensuring that nothing is built for single use. “The new iteration of With Every Fiber is designed to help the public reimagine architecture with fair labor,” Thatcher said. “It brings forward innovative solutions in stone, pigment, and glass — building materials that are typically at high-risk of forced and child labor — and highlights breakthrough approaches to ethical sourcing that will create a more humane built environment for all.”
The exhibit is not only a cultural presentation but a moral provocation. It insists that even the built environment can become a site of ethical reform — that architecture is never neutral, and that buildings carry within them the stories of labor, justice, and dignity.
Building Community, Sustaining Rituals
Beyond marquee names and exhibitions, the 10th anniversary season reflects Grace Farms’ commitment to the rhythms of community life. Tea tastings, wellness retreats, nature walks, and family programs are woven throughout the calendar. Weekly gatherings like the Bunny Book Group for children, Open Arts Studio sessions, and Thursday morning workshops anchor the place as a living community center, not just a destination for special events.
From September’s “Mocktails with Grace Farms Pastry Chef and Educator Leah Jones” to May’s “Shop with a Purpose | Mindful Market,” the schedule extends hospitality into dozens of small-scale encounters. These programs may lack the glamour of a Yo-Yo Ma recital, but they are equally central to the Grace Farms ethos: that cultural and humanitarian life begins in the everyday, in the simple acts of making, sharing, tasting, and learning together.
A Decade Behind, a Future Ahead
When Grace Farms opened its doors in 2015, skeptics wondered if its model was too ambitious, too diffuse: a place that was simultaneously about architecture, art, nature, community, and faith. Could such a vision hold together?
Ten years on, the answer is clear. The institution has become a recognized leader in cultural programming, a hub for humanitarian initiatives like Design for Freedom, and a beloved local destination for New Canaan residents. Its collaborations have extended to Nobel laureates, the London Philharmonic, social entrepreneurs, and artists across the globe.
Yet what may matter most is not the celebrity names or global reach but the sense of possibility Grace Farms has cultivated. Nearly a million visitors have experienced its spaces, and each has been invited to participate in a vision of a more humane, interconnected world.
As the 10th anniversary season unfolds — with its sculptures and lectures, its concerts and tea tastings — the phrase “We all build” takes on concrete resonance. Grace Farms is not only celebrating what it has achieved but reminding its community that the work of building peace, beauty, and justice is collective, unfinished, and ongoing.
2025
September 11: Mocktails with Grace Farms Pastry Chef and Educator Leah Jones
September 13: Alicja Kwade: ParaPosition at Grace Farms
September 13: Nature Workshops by Kimberly Kelly | Slow Flower Bouquets
September 19: Afternoon Tea
September 20: Move with Grace Farms x lululemon
September 20: Guided Nature Walk | Tree Walk
September 20: Member Day at Grace Farms
September 26: Lunch with a Purpose | Citizens of Humanity & west~bourne
September 27: Origin Story: Grace Farms Tea & Coffee with Adam Thatcher
September 27: Guided Nature Walk | Birdwatching
October 1: Guided Fairtrade Coffee Tasting | International Coffee Day
October 4: Guided Nature Walk | Birdwatching
October 11: 10 Year Celebration
October 11: With Every Fiber | New iteration unveiling
October 25: Guided Nature Walk | Tree Walk
November 1: The Way of an Athlete | A Special Event with Kerri Walsh Jennings
November 1: Aldrich Museum Tour for Grace Farms Members
November 6: Mocktails with Grace Farms Pastry Chef and Educator Leah Jones
November 8: Rest House Workshop with Slade Architecture
November 8: Nature Workshops by Kimberly Kelly | Garlic Workshop
November 14: Afternoon Tea
November 15: Move with Grace Farms x lululemon
November 16: Music at Grace Farms: Mon Rovîa
November 19: Journey into the World of Tea
November 28 and 29: Songs of the Season
December 3: Candlelit Yoga and Movement with Pilin Anice
December 5: Gifting for Good
December 7: Cookie Decorating with Grace Farms Pastry Chef and Educator Leah Jones
December 12: Afternoon Tea
December 13: Music at Grace Farms: Broadway Inspirational Voices
December 13: Nature Workshops by Kimberly Kelly | Sustainable Holiday Décor
December 17: Journey into the World of Tea
December 20: Move with Grace Farms x lululemon
December 27 and 28: Songs of the Season
December 31: Wellness Tea Retreat
