ENFIELD — The Enfield Shaker Museum has received a nearly $50,000 grant to prepare an exhibit for the 250th anniversary of the 1774 arrival of the Shakers in what would become the United States.
The National Endowment for the Humanities money, which came through 2021’s American Rescue Plan Act, is the second federal COVID-19 pandemic-related grant that the Enfield-based museum has received. In May 2020, the nonprofit organization was awarded around $79,610 from the CARES Act.
That money allowed staff to catalog more of the museum’s collection and to photograph artifacts and post them online. That process is ongoing, Shirley Wajda, the museum’s executive director, said Monday.
“We were also able to start the process of writing scripts for a smartphone tour which will be available next year,” she said.
This new grant builds on the previous one. The $49,943 will cover the costs of two exhibits — one online and one in person — set to open in 2024.
The Shakers are an offshoot of the Quakers. Around two years after Ann Lee, a leader of the sect, arrived in the New World, she and her followers settled near Albany, N.Y., according to a history compiled by the National Park Service. Among their beliefs were communal living and pacifism. Notably, they did not believe in having children and instead relied on adoption and conversion to populate their movement.
The online exhibit is tentatively titled “Enfield Everywhere” and will feature Shaker materials and artifacts that originated in Enfield but are held at museums elsewhere. The in-person exhibit, to be held at the museum, will focus on the history of Enfield’s Shaker Village, which was founded in 1793 and disbanded in 1923.
“It takes a while to do a good exhibit and this grant basically funds us for a year of research and scripting,” Wajda said.
The grant pays for the staff hours dedicated to research those exhibits. It also funds a part-time history communicator and contracted exhibit manager to pull it all together.
Wajda is particularly enthusiastic about hiring a history communicator, who will focus on increasing the museum’s social media presence, including Facebook, and keeping the public informed of the ongoing research.
The history communicator also will add museum information to Wikipedia. For example, in the subsection “Architecture and furnishings” on the “Shakers” Wikipedia page, the staff member could try to add a photograph of a Shaker chair made in Enfield, pending approval from a Wikipedia editor.
Wajda, who earned a doctorate in American civilization and a certificate in museum curatorship at the University of Pennsylvania, cringed at first at using Wikipedia, but she acknowledged the role it plays as an entry point for people who are learning about history.
“We need to teach some historical literacy and media literacy to know what is fact from fiction,” Wajda said. “Wikipedia is a good starting point and we want to be active in it.”
Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
