The Gift to be Simple: Our Local Shaker Heritage and Its Future

This panel discussion will feature Shaker Museum’s newly appointed Executive Director Claudia Gould, Director of Library & Collections Jerry Grant, and Collections Manager Sharon Duane Koomler. Topics will include the museum’s now 18,000 object-strong collection, history of the Shakers at Mount Lebanon’s thriving garden seed industry, and plans on the horizon for the museum, including innovative collaborations with contemporary artists and a new flagship facility set to open in downtown Chatham in 2028.

Shaker Museum holds a comprehensive collection of Shaker objects, archives, and books, and stewards the historic North Family site at Mount Lebanon, the founding community of the Shakers. The organization is building a 21st-century museum to showcase the world’s most comprehensive collection of Shaker material culture and archives. The four-floor facility is designed by Selldorf Architects, who are renowned worldwide for designing subtle but powerful art spaces.

Sharon Duane Koomler is a Shaker scholar and traditional letterpress printer living in upstate New York. She has academic degrees in American Folklore from Indiana University and Western Kentucky University. Sharon has worked at Shaker Museums from Kentucky to New Hampshire as an educator, curator, consultant, and director. She has written and published on Shaker material culture and spirituality, and lectured widely on Shaker art, life, and belief. Sharon has a particular interest in the under-researched social aspects of Shaker life and ways in which Shakers practiced inclusion and intentionality.

Jerry V. Grant is the Director of Library and Collections at Shaker Museum. His interest in the Shakers began in the mid-1970s with teaching himself to make Shaker oval boxes and researching how Shakers made them. This research eventually led to work at Hancock Shaker Village as an historic interpreter, oval box maker, librarian, and administrator. Following specialized training in rare books and archives, he began work in his present position at the Shaker Museum and Library in 1987. Grant holds an undergraduate degree from Michigan State University in history, anthropology, and secondary education, a Masters of Library and Information Science from the State University of New York at Albany, and has additional coursework in rare book librarianship at Syracuse and Columbia Universities.  He has either been directly responsible for management of the Museum’s collection and developing and mounting exhibitions or has been on a team with a curator for the same during his entire tenure at the Museum. He has a great depth of knowledge about the Museum’s collections – both objects and archives materials. Grant is author of Shaker Furniture Makers (1989) and Noble But Plain: The Second Shaker Meetinghouse at Mount Lebanon, New York (1994) and a contributor to Shaker: Function – Purity – Perfection (2014). He has lectured on Shaker topics for over forty years.

Claudia Gould has served as Executive Director of Shaker Museum since August 2025, guiding the institution into its next chapter of growth and public impact. A visionary leader and strategic planner, Gould’s career includes a transformative tenure at the Jewish Museum as well as influential leadership roles at ICA University of Pennsylvania and Artists Space. Recently described by the New York Times as a “powerful cultural hybridizer,” she is widely recognized for her iconoclastic, cross-disciplinary approach to exhibitions. Gould’s vision bridges historical and contemporary perspectives, honoring the past while advancing new ways of seeing. At Shaker Museum, Gould is leading the organization through a pivotal period, including the construction of a new flagship facility designed by Selldorf Architects in downtown Chatham, New York.

Free: Registrer Here (requested to insure seating)