HARVARD, MASS.- The Trustees announced that Fruitlands Museum, its newest property, is presenting Comforts, Cures, and Distractions: Winter at Fruitlands Museum, running through March 26, 2017. The exhibition brings wintry New England into vivid focus with an assortment of art and artifacts from the museum’s diverse Transcendentalist, Shaker, Native American, and landscape painting collection.

“As daylight hours shorten and temperatures plummet, snow transforms the landscape, blanketing it with hushed beauty,” says Fruitlands Curator Shana Dumont Garr who joined The Trustees in September. “During this season of winter wonder it becomes difficult to imagine how people made it through the cold weather in past centuries, before central heating and other modern conveniences. The objects assembled in Comforts, Cures and Distractions will connect visitors to moments spent during winters past, and historical attempts to foster good health and good cheer, offering glimpses into wintertime daily life in 18th and 19th century New England when life was often so much more challenging day to day.”

The array of items also tells a unique story about Fruitlands’ collection, with Shaker scarves and mittens, a Woodlands Native American water warmer, or mokuk, and a 19th-century painting of ice skaters that captures the dramatic transformation of the landscape. There are skates, sleds, and snowshoes dating from the era when 11-year-old Louisa May Alcott described playing in the snow when she and her family lived in the Fruitlands Farmhouse in 1834; as well as a pair of pink and white mittens that are believed to have been used by the Alcott girls.

“Seeing items drawn from Fruitlands Museum’s varied collections provides an opportunity to see how different communities solve the same enduring problems of how to stay warm, fed, and entertained during the tough winter months,” adds Rebecca Migdal, who co-curated the exhibition with Dumont. Contemporary objects, such as dried herbs that follow Shaker healing traditions, a shovel, hat, and sled will help round out stories that follow themes of either survival or celebration and connect winters past with winters present.

Comforts, Cures, and Distractions is co-curated by Fruitlands Curator Shana Dumont Garr and Rebecca Migdal.