past exhibition

The Shakers and the Modern World: A Collaboration with Canterbury Shaker Village

October 12, 2019–February 16, 2020

Sisters Marguerite Frost and Eunice Clark playing the saxophone, early 20th century, archival photograph, Selection of New Hampshire Shaker buckets and pails, mid-19th century, photographs courtesy of Canterbury Shaker Village.

For over 200 years the outside world looked upon the Shakers as a mysterious society. While the Shakers may have been a cloistered group, they were also adapting to the rapidly changing world around them. They explored modern innovations from mass production techniques and commercial branding to electric power and automobiles, all while carefully managing their public image and preserving their core values of communal living and religious devotion.

 

Drawn from the extensive holdings at Canterbury Shaker Village and the Currier Museum, the exhibition includes classic and Victorian-style Shaker furniture, finely crafted boxes, buckets and pails, and fancy work products produced for their own use and for the commercial market. The exhibition will also present rarely seen founding documents, such as Canterbury’s first written covenant, 1796, and historic photographs and publications that defined the Shakers for the public. Discover the unexpected in this new look at the Shakers in the modern world.

 

This exhibition is generously supported by the Susan Strickler Exhibition Fund and by the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation.

past exhibitions

Archived material on past exhibitions can be explored further here, and recent past exhibition catalogues are available through the museum shop.

artist in residence

Our Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program invites artists to live and work at the museum. While in residence, artists consider the collection and community, and refresh our perspectives on the role of the museum. The program is central to the Currier Museum’s mission of connecting our audiences with art and creative thinking, whether of the past or the future. We hope to learn from our visiting artists – and be surprised by their perspectives.

Artists working in all media participate in the AIR program, which has three main components: 1) an open call to support emerging artists making socially engaged art; 2) an invitational through which artists are selected to develop special projects, commissions, or exhibitions; and 3) artist-led, community-centered public art projects in the city of Nashua, NH.

 

Open Call for Artist in Residence Applications

Our annual open call is currently live from October 1 – December 1, 2022. Artists who share the museum’s goal of positively impacting communities through the transformative power of art are encouraged to apply to this residency.

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