History, Natural History & the Arts
The Shaker Museum, which stewards an extensive collection of Shaker material culture and archives, has been awarded a $550,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant will be used to construct and outfit a climate-controlled collections storage facility within the new museum building planned for downtown Chatham, Columbia County, NY. [Read more…] about Shaker Museum Gets $550k For Climate-Controlled Collections Storage
The Shaker Museum has announced a call for woodwork for the new online exhibit “In Union, Remotely.” All submissions should draw inspiration from the Shakers’ values or way of life, which the participants can learn more about in Shaker Museum’s comprehensive online collection. [Read more…] about A Shaker Museum Call for Woodwork
A new exhibition on Shaker Baskets is now open at the Columbia County Historical Society Museum & Library, in the new Smook | Peduzzi Gallery.
Durable Beauty: Shaker Baskets from Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon was produced by the Columbia County Historical Society (CCHS) along with the Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon, with the baskets on loan to CCHS from SM|ML. It will be on view for the 2018 visitor season at the CCHS Museum & Library. [Read more…] about Shaker Basket Exhibition in Kinderhook
Historian Rob Emlen is set to give an illustrated lecture on Early Depictions of Shakers at Mount Lebanon, on Saturday, March 17th from 4 to 5 pm at Stair Galleries, 549 Warren Street, in Hudson.
Following his visit to the Mount Lebanon Shaker village in August, 1856, the New York newspaper artist Benson Lossing made watercolor drawings to guide the production of the wood engravings that illustrated the article he published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine about daily life in a Shaker community. Although the illustrations for Lossing’s Shaker article were printed in black and white, his original watercolors have survived to give us an extraordinary glimpse at the colors of the Mount Lebanon Shaker village 162 years ago. [Read more…] about Early Depictions of Mt Lebanon Shakers Lecture in Hudson
In 2016 Shaker Museum Mount Lebanon received a $750,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to fund a project to bring its collections online.
The Museum has retained the New York City based web design firm Studio Analogous to create a website that highlights the Museum’s collection of Shaker material culture, including objects, publications, and archives.
Two full-time project staff have been working with existing Museum staff and Boston-based freelance photographer John Mulligan to create digital records for the entire collection and to photograph a portion of the objects. The resulting website is expected to allow users to explore the collection in depth and discover connections between objects, archival material, photographs, individual Shakers, and the various Shaker communities. [Read more…] about Mount Lebanon Shaker Site Putting Collections Online
McDormand and Suzzy Roche of The Wooster Group’s Early Shaker Spirituals: A Record Album Interpretation, along with the piece’s director Kate Valk, will present an excerpt from Early Shaker Spirituals, a performance based on the record album of the same name recorded by the Sisters of the Sabbathday Lake, Maine, Shaker Community in 1976 at the Shaker Museum’s annual fundraiser Gala on Saturday, August 19. Early Shaker Spirituals: A Record Album Interpretation premiered at The Performing Garage in New York City in 2014. [Read more…] about Mount Lebanon Shaker Museum Annual Gala
The Shaker Museum will host celebrate the 281st birthday of Shaker founder Mother Ann Lee (February 29, 1736 to September 8, 1784), and the beginning of Women’s History Month, marked every year in March, at The Shaker Bar in Hudson, NY on Saturday, March 4 from 5 to 7 pm.
Portraits of influential Shaker women will be displayed on the bar’s walls and guests will have the opportunity to learn about the museum’s summer programming celebrating and exploring the Shakers’ commitment to gender equality and equal rights during this centennial year of women’s suffrage in New York State. [Read more…] about Mother Ann’s Birthday Celebration at The Shaker Bar in Hudson
The Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon will host a weekend of events and programs to commemorate over 200 years of Shaker pacifism, from Saturday, August 29 through Monday, August 31.
The Mount Lebanon Peace Weekend will consist of readings, a brunch and facilitated discussion about Shaker pacifist history, a panel of speakers currently active in the peace movement, and a special walking tour. [Read more…] about Lebanon Shaker Museum Plans Peace Weekend
The New York State Museum will open a new major exhibition about the history and culture of the Shakers on November 15, 2014. The Shakers: America’s Quiet Revolutionaries will feature over 150 historic images and nearly 200 Shaker artifacts, including artifacts from three Shaker historical sites: the Shaker Heritage Society, Hancock Shaker Village and the Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon.
In the late 1700s, the Shakers sought religious freedom in America, but their unique culture and spiritual practices set them apart from society. Their devotional routines as well as their product innovations and views towards gender equality seemed revolutionary. [Read more…] about Shaker Exhibition Opening At NYS Museum
The third annual Mount Lebanon Heritage Herb Festival celebrates the illustrious past of herbs in town history as well as the Native American and Shaker traditions in the heart of the Lebanon Valley of New York, considered the birthplace of the herbal pharmacy in the United States.
The event takes place on Saturday, June 7, 2014 from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on the historic grounds of Darrow School, at Mount Lebanon Shaker Village. More than eighteen talks, walks and workshops explore the role of herbs in food, gardens, medicine and health from the early days of the Native Americans to current practices. [Read more…] about Mount Lebanon Heritage Herb Festival Planned