We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aaron Rosen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aaron below.

Aaron, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

In the middle of the pandemic, my wife and I decided to move back to my home state of Maine, and buy an old Federalist estate from 1831, overlooking the ocean. We never saw it in person, and only had some photos of it from my parents and a Blair-Witch style swerving, blurry video taken by my mother. But we had a good feeling about the place–somehow!

When we moved, everything came together in ways we couldn’t have dreamed. When we researched the home we discovered it was first built as a parsonage for Rev. Stephen Thurston, his wife Clara, and their large family. Rev. Thurston was pastor of First Congregational Church, a stunning historic building up the hill, and a passionate abolitionist, active on the national stage.. Clara was the aunt of Winslow Homer, one of America’s greatest artists, who not only visited the house but even sketched pictures of the family. Over time, we even acquired Clara’s Bible, poems about the original owners by the famous Revolutionary War author Joseph Pumb Martin, watercolors by Winslow Homer’s mother Henrietta, and prints by Homer. These pieces now form the spiritual and aesthetic heart of the gallery we founded: The Parsonage.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a professor by training, and was fortunate to earn my PhD at Cambridge in England, and teach at Columbia, Oxford, Yale, King’s College London and other great institutions. Eventually I found myself itching for more autonomy, impact, and creativity in my professional life.

I find some of that through my writing, including books for general audiences like Art & Religion in the 21st Century and What Would Jesus See? The Parsonage Gallery provides me with an experimental space to test out some of the ideas and address questions I raise in my writing about spirituality, ecology, and coexistence. And, most of all, it offers an opportunity be surprised by the ideas and creations which artists come up with.

At this stage in my career, I think surprise, creativity, and collaboration are some of the things that keep pressing me forward.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I’ve always found that the keys to creative development can often be quite simple and practical. Artists need support, space, and time. At my gallery, I try to provide as much of each of these as possible, and I love asking artists: what have other institutions told you wasn’t feasible, profitable, or practical? Let’s try that!

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

There are a lot of presumptions about what it means to engage with religion and spirituality. To some audiences, it can seem fusty or confining. But I want to use the arts to help people to see how open these topics can be. I’m a practicing agnostic Jew married to an Episcopal priest, raising our son Jewish, so dialogue and difference are a big part of my life. And I am–perhaps unsurprisingly–drawn to artists who help us see religion from unexpected angles, a theme I also often talk about in my writing.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.parsonagegallery.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/parsonagegallery/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ParsonageGallery/
• Other: Amazon Author Page for gallery director/founder, Dr Aaron Rosen: https://www.amazon.com/author/aaronrosen

Image Credits
-Aaron Rosen (author), Art and Religion in the 21st Century (Thames & Hudson) -Aaron Rosen (author), What Would Jesus See? (Broadleaf) -Michael Takeo Magruder (artist), Sea Watch, 2022-23 -Michael Takeo Magruder (artist), 2022-23 -Eleanor Anderson (artist), Circuit-Breakers, 2023 -Summer J. Hart (artist/author), Out in May Back by October, 2023 -Brian Smith (artist), That Queer Fish, 2023 -Joshua Ferry (artist), Cross Paintings, 2023 -Ian Trask (artist), Out of the Whirlwind, 2022