Utopia: Three Centuries of Sexuality in American Cults and Communes
October 11, 2025 – April 12, 2026
“These communities were laboratories for rethinking nearly every aspect of life—sexuality, spirituality, gender, family, and art. Through their archives and creative expression, we witness their attempts to reimagine new ways of living and loving in America.”
— Jodi Wille, Curator
Overview
Bio
Credits
Curated by Jodi Wille, Utopia: Three Centuries of Sexuality in American Cults and Communes traces how alternative spiritual communities across the United States have radically reimagined intimacy, gender, and the sacred over the past three hundred years. Through an extraordinary range of archives, artifacts, and creative expression, the exhibition examines how collective visions of freedom and the bodies that carried them reshaped the American imagination.
Featuring more than 300 artworks, photographs, films, records, garments, and rare artifacts from 20 historical intentional communities, Utopia explores how spirituality and sexuality intertwined in the pursuit of transcendence, belonging, and self-actualization. From the celibate devotion of the Shakers to the ecstatic rituals of the Source Family, these groups experimented with new social structures that challenged mainstream norms around love, labor, and liberation.
By bringing these stories together for the first time, Utopia reframes the history of American spiritual subcultures through the lens of desire and creative reinvention. It reveals how these often misunderstood communities influenced wider cultural movements in art, sexuality, and consciousness that continue to shape American life today.
Jodi Wille
Jodi Wille is a filmmaker, curator, publisher, and storyteller whose work illuminates American subcultures and the search for transcendence. Drawn to the mysteries that lie beyond conventional experience, she explores the lives, archives, and creative expressions of individuals and communities whose radical visions expand our understanding of art, spirituality, and identity.
Her immersive yet reflective approach has produced distinctive works across film, publishing, and exhibition. She directed and produced the acclaimed feature documentary The Source Family (2012) and recently premiered Welcome, Space Brothers (2023), a feature-length documentary on The Unarius Academy of Science.
Earlier in her career, Wille worked as a photographer and music video director for artists including R.E.M., Sparks, and Vincent Gallo, while also documenting alternative spiritual movements and self-taught visionary artists.
As cofounder of the publishing houses Dilettante Press (1998), Process Media (2004), and Otherworld (2022), she has edited and published numerous award-winning books and co-authored Family: The Source Family Scrapbook (2022, Otherworld and Sacred Bones).
Her curatorial work spans institutions such as The American Visionary Art Museum, Deitch Projects, Nicodim Gallery, and The Horse Hospital in London, as well as film and cultural programs across the United States and the United Kingdom.
In 2021, Wille was invited to guest co-edit a special issue of Religious Studies Review, the leading academic journal for the field, titled New Religious Movements and Documentary Film, now used as a teaching guide in universities worldwide.
CURATOR
Jodi Wille
ASSOCIATE CURATOR
Christian Goodwillie
ADVISOR
Timothy Miller
EXHIBITION DESIGN
John Monaco Eunice Yunjeong Lee
EXHIBITION PRODUCTION
Arasay Vazquez, Exhibitions and Curatorial Projects Manager Cletis Chatterton, Director of Building Operations & Exhibition Preparation Flores Painting – Construction, painting, carpentry Tam Gryn, General Manager Sara Sciabbarrasi, Art Handler Jake Alfieri, Art Handler Lena Hawkins, Art Handler Carlos Becerra, Art Handler
TEXTS
Jodi Wille Christian Goodwillie Kelly Eileen Hayes Brian Collins Hugh Urban Ellen Wayland Smith Steve Kurtz
ASSOCIATE VIDEO EDITOR
Kevin Lewis
RESEARCH ASSISTANCE
Amy Slonaker
KEY LENDER
Hamilton College Burke Special Collections Library
LENDERS
Astraleyes Bernice Davinson Buckland Museum Charlie Kitchings Christian Goodwillie Dean and Dudley Evenson David Miller Dawn Hurwitz Erik Bluhm Fayette Hauser Isis Aquarian Source Family Archives Israelite House of David Archives & Collections Jim Edmonds Jodi Wille Oneida Community Mansion House Sarah Seguinot & Joanne Yancoskie Special Research Collections, UC Santa Barbara Library Stephen Miller Summum Tom Stone Unarius Educational Foundation Zarathustra Aquarian
SPECIAL THANKS
Brian Carrol Travis Chandler Hedi El Kholti Robert Ganger David Gartrell Norman Girardot Dan Greenstone Rebecca Hoffberger Jefferson Holt Steven Intermill Charlie Kitchings Roger Manley J. Gordon Melton Aaron Moulton Steffie Nelson Ariel Plotek Megan Roberts Amy Slonaker Shannon Taggart Diana Tumminia Gilden Tunador
FEATURED COMMUNITIES
Church of All Worlds Cockettes Dean and Dudley Evenson Father Divine The Farm Free Love Movement of the 1840s House of David Kaliflower AKA Sutter Street Commune Kerista Lesbian back-to-the-land communes Love Israel Family The Moravians Oneida Community Paschal Beverly Randolph Radical Faeries Rainbow Gathering Rajneesh/OSHO Ray Buckland and Seax-Wicca The Shakers Society of Friends Spiritualists The Source Family Summum Unarius Academy of Science
