Fruitlands Museum, founded in 1914 by Clara Endicott Sears, takes its name from an experimental utopian community led by Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane which took place on this site in 1843.
Fruitlands encompasses five collections on 210 acres of meadows and woods with stunning views. The Fruitlands campus includes:
- The Fruitlands Farmhouse, the site of the experiment in communal living led by Alcott and Lane in 1843
- The Shaker Museum, the first Shaker museum in the country and home to the largest archive of Harvard Shaker documents in the world, housed in an historic building moved here from the Harvard Shaker community.
- The Native American Museum, which houses a significant collection of artifacts that honor the spiritual presence and cultural history of the first Americans including New England Native culture and a survey of culture in the Plains, Southwest and Northwest.
- The Art Museum, including a collection of over 100 Hudson River School landscape paintings and over 230 nineteenth century vernacular portraits, the second largest collection in the country along with a variety of rotating exhibits throughout the year.