The Vitra Design Museum in Germany has opened "The Shakers: A World in the Making," an exhibition exploring the minimalist designs and democratic beliefs of the Shakers, an egalitarian religious sect founded in the 18th century. Organized with the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, and Germany's Wüstenrot Foundation in collaboration with the Shaker Museum in Chatham, New York, the show features historic Shaker objects like oval boxes and ladder-back chairs alongside newly commissioned works by contemporary artists including Amie Cunat, David Hartt, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed.
The exhibition matters because it highlights how Shaker principles of craftsmanship, simplicity, utility, and communal wellbeing continue to influence contemporary design and art, offering a radically different worldview that resonates amid current political and social divisions. The show joins a cluster of recent Shaker-themed exhibitions, including "Believers: Artists and the Shakers" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, underscoring a renewed interest in the sect's values of equality, humility, and pacifism as their active membership has dwindled to just two people.