Straight chairs, whirling dances: The austere craftsmanship of this disappearing group is as striking as their ecstatic worship, on view at ICA Philadelphia.
By Christopher Hawthorne
Published March 12, 2026.
Every exhibition on the design legacy of the Shakers faces the same fundamental question: How to address the gap between the elegantly sober furniture they designed and their style of worship, a spinning, occasionally frenzied blend of song and dance summed up by the title of an 1848 hymn,“Limber Zeal.”
Buyers of Shaker goods could expect a reliably high level of craftsmanship and attention to detail. But eccentricity? Decoration? Angles other than 90 degrees? These were reserved for God. Signs on dining room tables offered a reminder: “Bread and meat are to be cut square.”
The curators of “A World in the Making: The Shakers,” running through Aug. 9 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Contemporary Art, have responded by bringing limber zeal prominently (and rather impatiently) to the front. This version of the show, which debuted in slightly different form at the Vitra Design Museum in Germany last year, begins by spotlighting work by seven contemporary artists with some affinity for the philosophy or design output of the Shakers, that industrious, pacifist, separatist and celibate American sect.