Fruitlands Museum. Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts, is a museum about multiple visions of America on the site of the short-lived utopian community, Fruitlands.
The museum includes the Fruitlands farmhouse, a museum about Shaker life, an art gallery with 19th-century landscape paintings, vernacular American portraits, and other changing exhibitions, and a museum of Native American history. In 2023, readers of USA Today voted to name Fruitlands as one of the ten best history museums in the United States.
Visitors can tour the farmhouse, which has been restored to appear as it did during the 1840s, and exhibits about Transcendentalism and the Alcott family. Fruitlands offers a diverse schedule of contemporary exhibits, lectures, outdoor concerts and easy walking trails.
There is also a museum store and restaurant. The properties are overseen by The Trustees of Reservations.
Fruitlands, inspired by Transcendentalism and Amos Bronson Alcott's ideas of societal reform, was established on 90 acres purchased by Charles Lane in May 1843. People interested in joining the community began moving in the next month and the site was optimistically named Fruitlands despite having only a small cluster of apple trees. The community was based on self-sufficiency, using no hired labor and growing all the food they needed themselves. The community ultimately failed because of the difficulty in growing cro
The museum includes the Fruitlands farmhouse, a museum about Shaker life, an art gallery with 19th-century landscape paintings, vernacular American portraits, and other changing exhibitions, and a museum of Native American history. In 2023, readers of USA Today voted to name Fruitlands as one of the ten best history museums in the United States.
Visitors can tour the farmhouse, which has been restored to appear as it did during the 1840s, and exhibits about Transcendentalism and the Alcott family. Fruitlands offers a diverse schedule of contemporary exhibits, lectures, outdoor concerts and easy walking trails.
There is also a museum store and restaurant. The properties are overseen by The Trustees of Reservations.
Fruitlands, inspired by Transcendentalism and Amos Bronson Alcott's ideas of societal reform, was established on 90 acres purchased by Charles Lane in May 1843. People interested in joining the community began moving in the next month and the site was optimistically named Fruitlands despite having only a small cluster of apple trees. The community was based on self-sufficiency, using no hired labor and growing all the food they needed themselves. The community ultimately failed because of the difficulty in growing cro
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