A Lecture On The Shaker Landscape

We sometimes think of landscape as an arrangement of plants to highlight a house or to create a mood or to impress. For the Shakers, the landscape was part of their making a utopia, creating heaven on earth. As they built their community at Mount Lebanon, eventually to house 600 members in 8 family groups on 600 acres, they were making a place that reflected their strongly held beliefs – in communal living, in equality, in a thousand-year reign of god on earth.
In an illustrated talk, David Stocks, President of the Shaker Museum and Library, will discuss several types of the Shakers’ unique landscape. This free lecture is sponsored by the Lebanon Valley and Taconic Valley Historical Societies and is open to the public on Monday, October 17, at 7 pm at the Mount Lebanon Shaker Village Meetinghouse (Darrow School Library), 102 Darrow Road, New Lebanon.