The New Harmony Social Alchemy Project
As placemakers, we’re fascinated by intentional communities, communities that are designed to thrive. That’s our goal for the Cruft Street Commons project in Garfield Park––to make an arts-focused, socially cohesive neighborhood.
Our key inspiration is a tiny, southwestern Indiana town. New Harmony was the site of two utopian experiments in the early 1800s. Hoosier writer Marguerite Young teased out the magic of New Harmony in her experimental 1944 novel, Angel in the Forest. In the 1940s-80s, town leader Jane Blaffer Owen envisioned New Harmony’s built environment as a mix of historic Hoosier and ultra modern. Today, New Harmony brims with art, history, architecture, and a strong sense of place.
What can we in urban Indianapolis learn from rural New Harmony’s social alchemy? Tons.
With our partners, The University of Southern Indiana, Indiana State Museum, Historic New Harmony, Workingmen’s Institute, and lots of individuals––we will explore, learn and share how the pursuit of utopia has formed places and pursuits.
Our Program
An interdisciplinary exhibition at the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art focused on New Harmony’s visionary civic leader and preservationist Jane Owen (1915–2010).
An exhibition at the Tube Factory about the history and art of New Harmony (designed to travel), with emphasis on Angel in the Forest and visual interpretations of this lyrical text.
A film series of documentaries (At Home in Utopia, 2008; The Last Angel In History, 1996) and feature films (Afronauts, 2014) related to placemaking experiments.
Two community meals, one in New Harmony and one in Garfield Park.
A major public talk by Darran Anderson, author of Imaginary Cities (2015), a book exploring how “ever- changing cities, whether real or unreal, must also be a history of the imagination.”
A two-day conference in October 2020 in New Harmony to include philosophers, writers, historians, designers, architects, placemakers, urban and rural city planners, politicians, and community organizers.
Two Tube Factory exhibitions by Native American artists Elisa Harkins (in 2021) and Wendy Red Star (in 2022): both creative responses to their peoples’ forced dystopias, with ideas for cultural renewal.
The impact
This project explores historical and contemporary examples of utopian experiments, fictional utopias and dystopias, and social design projects. It offers a deeper understanding of the relationship between the built environment and social good.
Who Was Marguerite Young?
A book that has shaped our thinking for this project is Indiana-born Marguerite Young’s (1908-1995) Angel in the Forest: A Fairy Tale of Two Utopias (1944). It’s a non-fiction work with a surrealist style: a lyrical, magical take on the New Harmony true-life fable. Born in Indianapolis, Young studied at Butler University and taught Kurt Vonnegut at Shortridge High School before joining New York’s Greenwich Village literary scene in the mid-1940s. Some believed her work was every bit as groundbreaking and masterful as James Joyce’s. Young once said, ‘I believe all my work explores the human desire or obsession for utopia, and the structure of all my works is the search for utopias lost and rediscovered. But the beauty of it is that you nevertheless go on, walking towards utopia, which may not exist, on a bridge which might end before you reach the other side.”
A Brief History of New Harmony
Pop. 763 (as of 2017)
The Mississippians: From 1100 to 1450, the Mississippian Indians maintained a complex, productive community, including earthen mounds built for ceremonial and cosmological purposes.
The Rappites: German farmer George Rapp and 400 followers arrived in New Harmony in 1815, creating a community based on productivity, worker-owned industries, and shared resources.
The Owenites: The Rappites sold the land in 1825 to Robert Owen, a Welsh socialist. At its height, 1,000 Owenites were part of a "Village of Unity and Mutual Cooperation" prioritizing worker rights, scientific research, and artistic expression.
Jane Blaffer Owen: For nearly seven decades, Jane Blaffer Owen was the driving force behind the restoration and revitalization of the town of New Harmony, Indiana. Owen had a vision for the town, bringing in and commissioning renowned architects, visual artists, musicians, and writers. Her time there is often referred to as the town's “third utopia."
Project Partners
University of Southern Indiana: As the administrator of both Historic New Harmony and the New Harmony Gallery, USI is encouraging staff, professors, and students to participate in the project.
Historic New Harmony: HNH will host programs, help to develop the exhibitions, and help travel the New Harmony exhibition about after its Indianapolis debut.
New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art: Gallery Director Garry Holstein is our main partner on the ground in New Harmony, and the gallery will host the Jane Owen exhibition.
Working Men’s Institute: This library/museum will help with historical research and lend artifacts for exhibitions.
Indiana State Museum: The museum will be assisting with reseach, and help with didactics.