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A New Shaker Museum

The Shaker Museum. is building a new home in Chatham, New York. Designed by New York City-based Seldorf Architects, the new Shaker Museum will be a four-floor facility connecting modern and historic wings, and public gardens. With more than 27,000 square feet of new and renovated space for exhibitions, events, workshops, and public use, the Museum will be a welcoming place.

The museum will be a Shaker educational hub and an community anchor while attracting a global audience of design enthusiasts, educators, school children, families, and cultural historians and the like. The museum is anticipated to attract more than 30,000 visitors a year, bringing economic opportunities to Columbia County and the region.

In the News

Calendar of Events
Featured
Claudia Gould, Former Jewish Museum Director, To Lead Shaker Museum During Transformation Era
Claudia Gould, Former Jewish Museum Director, To Lead Shaker Museum During Transformation Era

Shaker Museum, home to the world’s most significant collection of Shaker material culture, has named Claudia Gould, renowned for her transformative tenure at the Jewish Museum, as its next Executive Director. Gould’s appointment arrives as the museum commences the boldest evolution in its history: construction of a new flagship space by Selldorf Architects in downtown Chatham..

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Artnet: Frances McDormand Helps Bring Shaker Culture Back Into the Spotlight
Artnet: Frances McDormand Helps Bring Shaker Culture Back Into the Spotlight

Of the Kinderhook show focus, which was inspired in part by research of the Shaker Museum archives, McDormand said she loved “the idea that they built something that could hold an infirm or elderly person, who was bedridden, and that it was a communal act of giving to rock them and comfort them.”

“As a piece of furniture, the cradle has to involve other people,” said Bocanegra. “One person is in it, but it has to be activated by another person, otherwise it doesn’t work.”

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NYT: Shaker Cradles for Adults? They Rocked Frances McDormand’s Mind
NYT: Shaker Cradles for Adults? They Rocked Frances McDormand’s Mind

On a Thursday afternoon in late summer Frances McDormand, the actor, and Suzanne Bocanegra, a conceptual artist, were testing out a Shaker cradle for adults. The exhibit of these little-known furniture items that they put together for Shaker Museum’s pop-up gallery was days from opening in the Kinderhook Knitting Mill — a converted historic space in Columbia County, N.Y.

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Capital Campaign Progress

Featured
Shaker Museum Awarded $2.456 Million NYSCA Grant
Shaker Museum Awarded $2.456 Million NYSCA Grant

Shaker Museum, which stewards the most comprehensive collection of Shaker material culture and archives, announced today a grant award totaling $2,456,000 from the New York State Council on the Arts’ (NYSCA) Capital Projects Fund. Shaker Museum will use the generous state funding to build its new museum home designed by Selldorf Architects in Chatham, NY

$1.6 Million Shaker Museum Library, Archives, and Administrative Offices to Open
$1.6 Million Shaker Museum Library, Archives, and Administrative Offices to Open

Newly Renovated Building Donated By Jack Shear To Open Later This year

Shaker Museum, which stewards the most comprehensive collection of Shaker material culture and archives, announced today that it will open a new Library, Archives and Administrative facility at 29 Jones Avenue in Chatham, New York. The property and the costs to completely renovate the building were donated by longtime Shaker Museum supporter Jack Shear and represent a $1.6 million investment in the future of the museum.

Shaker Museum Receives $1,100,000 Gift from the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation for its new Facility in Chatham, NY
Shaker Museum Receives $1,100,000 Gift from the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation for its new Facility in Chatham, NY

Shaker Museum, which stewards the most comprehensive collection of Shaker material culture and archives, announced today that the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation has generously made a $1 million dollar gift to support the construction of the museum’s new home in Chatham, NY.

Exhibitions

Featured
The Shakers: A World in the Making
The Shakers: A World in the Making

The Shakers: A World in the Making explores the design legacy of the Shakers, a religious group whose values of community, labor, and equality shaped their furniture, architecture, and everyday objects. Through works by contemporary artists influenced by the Shakers, alongside original Shaker-made pieces, the exhibition considers how their design principles remain relevant today.

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In Kinderhook: Cradled
In Kinderhook: Cradled

Artists Frances McDormand and Suzanne Bocanegra have joined forces with Shaker Museum to present Cradled, a thought-provoking exhibition that explores the transcendent impact of the Shakers’ communal embrace from cradle to grave through objects, values, and inspired modern-day artistic expression.

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Unexpected Shaker
Unexpected Shaker

Shaker Museum announces its summer 2024 exhibition, Unexpected Shaker.

True to its title, this pop-up exhibition at the museum’s gallery space in the Kinderhook Knitting Mill focuses on unusual, lesser-known, and one-of-a-kind objects in the museum’s collection of over 18,000 material objects of Shaker culture.

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Palm to Poplar: Devotional Labor - by Caitlin MacBride
Palm to Poplar: Devotional Labor - by Caitlin MacBride

Shaker Museum announces its first 2024 exhibition, Palm to Poplar: Devotional Labor, coming to the pop-up gallery at the Kinderhook Knitting Mill. This exhibition, featuring the work of artist and educator Caitlin MacBride, will run from Saturday, February 3, through Sunday, April 28, 2024.

Caitlin MacBride is known for work that explores the connection between art and everyday life, engaging material culture and artifacts in an examination of labor and desire. In Palm to Poplar, Shaker Museum will showcase MacBride’s paintings of Shaker objects, providing visitors with a fresh perspective on these common, yet historically significant items. Her work will be displayed alongside pieces from Shaker Museum’s archive that have inspired her, creating a dialogue between the past and the present, the material and the ephemeral.

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The Alchemy of RE.USE by Hettler.Tüllmann (2023)
The Alchemy of RE.USE by Hettler.Tüllmann (2023)

When you make a product by hand, it automatically has a story. The fact that you have chosen to invest your time, energy, and skill to produce something means there has to be a deeper purpose to the object. This is clearly evidenced in “The Alchemy of Re.Use” – a new exhibition at the Kinderhook Knitting Mill in New York, curated by hettler.tüllmann and the Shaker Museum – where every item has been created with care and meaning.

Read the full article in DAMN° Magazine.

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The Designer Behind Bode Curates an Exhibition on Shaker Knitwear’s Influence on American Style
The Designer Behind Bode Curates an Exhibition on Shaker Knitwear’s Influence on American Style

The provenance-soaked approach of fashion designer Emily Adams Bode Aujla takes new shape with ‘The Commercialisation of Shaker Knits’, an exhibition for the Shaker Museum that traces the development of knitting from the late 19th century to the present day, curated by Bode Aujla and currently on view at the Kinderhook Knitting Mill in Kinderhook, New York.

Read the full article in Wallpaper.

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