Past Exhibition

Crafting Utopia: The Art of Shaker Women
September 5 - November 17, 2002

Crafting Utopia is the first exhibition to travel from Hancock Shaker Village to focus on the role of women in the community and their importance in the development of Shaker craft. The Shaker Women's designs, which are based upon a life of prayer and labor, are reflected in the exhibit's furniture, kitchen utensils, clothes and carpenter's tools.

Hancock Shaker Village, settled in 1790, was the third Shaker community established in America. It was the home to Shakers until 1960, when the last few members moved away and the property was sold to the museum that continues to preserve the Shaker's heritage. At its peak, circa 1840, about two hundred and fifty celibate Brothers and Sisters lived in six communal families on three thousand acres.

Today, Hancock Shaker Village houses the largest and finest collection of Shaker artifacts in an original Shaker site. More than twenty historic buildings of the Church Family or Senior Order remain in situ, including the famous 1826 Round Stone Barn. The buildings, mostly workshops and barns, cluster around the Brick Dwelling, built in 1830, and the Meetinghouse, the first structure built by the community at its gathering.