Natasha Vaughn is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media the Shaker Museum in New Lebanon has been awarded a $550,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The funds will be used for a climate-controlled collections storage facility within the new museum building, planned for downtown Chatham. Museum Executive Director Lacy Schutz in a statement, “As stewards of this incredible collection, our first priority must be to preserve and protect this material so we can then in turn share it with generations to come. This grant will help us do just that. We are honored to be included in the NEH’s 2020 grant cycle, which includes so many valuable cultural endeavors across the country.” The museum is in the process of reopening at a new location after being closed to the public for more than 10 years. The Shaker Museum has purchased a 19th century industrial building in Chatham and is renovating the space and building an addition. The new space will be able to hold the more than 18,000 objects in the museum’s collection and is expected to be completed in 2023. The Mount Lebanon Shaker Village site holds the world’s most comprehensive collection of Shaker objects, archives and books. It was the home of the Shakers founding community, the North Family. In the mid-19th century, approximately 600 people lived and worked at Mount Lebanon, which had hundreds of buildings on more than 6,000 acres. The Shaker Museum was founded in 1950 by John S. Williams, Sr. on his farm in Old Chatham. The NEH awarded more than $32.8 million to various projects in 44 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Thirty projects in New York received more than $5.3 million in grants. The Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill was awarded a $30,000 NEH grant for the development of a 3-D digital game based on Thomas Cole paintings. The game will be designed to help kindergarten to sixth-grade students learn about American history through art. Read more at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.