shaker museum
MUSEUMS • CULTURE • COMMUNITY • EDUCATION
How do you bring a 200-year-old legacy into the digital age — without losing the soul of what made it timeless?
The Shakers are often reduced to their chairs and their celibacy. But the full story is far richer — a community defined by radical inclusion, ingenious invention, and a way of living that put shared values above individual gain.
The Shaker Museum in Chatham, New York, stewards the world's most comprehensive collection of Shaker material culture: more than eighteen thousand artifacts that tell that story in full. We have had the privilege of working alongside Executive Director Lacy Schutz — a visionary leader reinventing what a museum can be — since 2017.
What began as a website redesign grounded in inclusive design principles has grown into a long-term creative partnership, evolving alongside the museum itself as it prepares to open a landmark new facility designed by Selldorf Architects in downtown Chatham.
CHALLENGE
The Shaker Museum was at a turning point. With a growing collection, an ambitious capital campaign, and a new building on the horizon, the museum needed a digital presence that could do several things at once: make eighteen thousand physical artifacts accessible to a global audience online, communicate the contemporary relevance of Shaker values to new generations, and galvanize support for the museum's most significant expansion in its history.
The challenge was not only technical — it was philosophical. How do you design a digital experience that embodies the very values the institution exists to preserve? Inclusion, access, craft, and community had to live inside the experience, not just be described by it.
APPROACH
We applied the same human-centered design approach that guided the Shakers themselves: start with the community, design with rather than for, and let core values shape every decision. Working collaboratively with the museum's leadership team, we identified the full range of audiences the platform needed to serve — local community members, design enthusiasts, cultural historians, educators, global supporters, and potential donors — and mapped the distinct journeys each one needed to take through the site.
From that foundation, we designed and built a digital experience that: Brings the museum's collection of over eighteen thousand artifacts to life online through an immersive, accessible digital archive Applies inclusive design principles throughout — ensuring the experience is as welcoming digitally as the Shakers were in their own communities Connects Shaker values — inclusion, creativity, invention — to contemporary conversations and current events Serves as a single, unified platform integrating the museum's online and offline initiatives — from the collection to the capital campaign to community programming
RESULTS
A digitally inclusive online collection experience that has expanded the museum's reach and grown its following across social media platforms including Instagram
A platform that has actively supported the museum's thirty-five million dollar capital campaign — sixteen million dollars of which has already been raised
Major institutional funding secured, including a two-point-four million dollar grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, a one-point-one million dollar gift from the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, and a combined five million dollar state investment from NYSCA and Empire State Development
Groundbreaking on the new Selldorf Architects-designed facility in Chatham, NY — a nearly twenty-six million dollar, thirty-thousand square foot expansion — took place in April 2025
The new facility is projected to attract more than thirty thousand visitors annually, strengthening the museum's role as a cultural and economic anchor for Columbia County and the Hudson Valley This is not easy to do. But when the design reflects the values of the institution — when inclusion lives inside the experience and not just in the mission statement — something real happens.
We are proud to have been part of how the Shaker Museum is opening doors, and we can't wait to see what the next chapter brings. Listen to our conversation with Lacy Schutz on the Project Inclusion Podcast to hear how the Shaker Museum is reimagining what an inclusive institution can look like — for visitors, for communities, and for the future of museums.
