Ongoing Exhibit (Until November 2, 2025)

“a good many hands” Shaker Communities Woven through Word, Image & Object

May 2025 marks the opening of Fruitlands Museum’s exhibit, “a good many hands” Shaker Communities Woven through Word, Image & Object (Senior Curator: Christie Jackson).

The phrase “a good many hands” is repeatedly used in a mid-19th-century journal by the Shaker Sisters of Harvard, Massachusetts. The four words eloquently capture the spirit of the Shakers and their intriguing and influential religious movement in America. The exhibit—located in Fruitland Museum’s Seasonal Gallery—celebrates the community forged at the Harvard Shaker Village through work, worship, connection to the land, commitment to sustainability, and each other.

Fruitlands is only four miles away from the original site of the Harvard Shaker Village, home to a thriving community from 1781 to 1918. Central to the exhibit “a good many hands” are journals, letters, and photographs from the Shaker Archives at Fruitlands Museum, one of the oldest and largest repositories of Shaker archival materials in the country. Personal objects, furniture, and textiles enrich the stories being shared, offering an intimate and relatable experience for visitors to learn about the concept of community among the Shakers, all within a local landscape.

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the Shakers in America, bringing with them a community that celebrated gender and racial equality, pacifism, and sustainability. Today, they are also appreciated for their craftsmanship, innovation, and connection to the natural world.

Accompanying “a good many hands” is an exciting installation by artist Brece Honeycutt in the Shaker Gallery at Fruitlands Museum. Honeycutt’s interest in the temporal and spiritual uses of Shaker color will be explored in her installation, “anything but drab.” Honeycutt’s work centers on a large-scale accordion book painted with watercolors and dyes, similar to those used by the Shakers. The colors on the pages echo Shaker chromatics found on architectural elements, furniture, and wooden smalls. Honeycutt’s work, and other Shaker objects on display in the Shaker Gallery, will be in dialogue with the exhibition “a good many hands” on view in the nearby Seasonal Gallery.

We invite you to celebrate with us—“a good many hands” today can foster a vibrant and uplifting sense of community, just as it did over a century ago.

Art On View