Virtual gala scheduled in August for Shaker Museum
OLDCHATHAM, N.Y. » Shaker Museum will soon hold its first-ever virtual Annual Benefit Gala honoring Lacey Schwartz Delgado and Alan Cumming.
The Aug. 1 event will unite numerous supporters of the Shaker Museumin a shared online experience that will include entertainment, remarks from the honorees, and a dance party hosted by Club Cumming in New York City via Instagram Live.
“Due to ongoing health risks related to COVID-19, we have made a decision not to gather together in person under the big tent at the historic Mount Lebanon site this year as planned,” Lacy Schutz, the museum’s director, said in a press release, “but a bigger virtual tent awaits us, one that can include many more people, people who may have been prevented in the past from attending due to any number of factors – geography, conflicts, or lack of resources.”
The theme of this year’s gala is inclusion, and the museum’s 2020 honorees are individuals whose work embodies and promotes inclusion.
Schwartz Delgado is an awardwinning producer, writer, director, and outreach strategist who draws on her interdisciplinary background to create compelling stories that span documentary and fiction and work with innovative organizations and brands.
She is co-founder of the production company Truth Aid, which produces inspiring and empowering multi-media content to affect social change, and director of outreach for Be’chol Lashon, which works around issues of racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity in the Jewish community.
Schwartz Delgado directed, produced, and co-wrote the critically acclaimed documentary Little White Lie, a top-rated broadcast on PBS’s “Independent Lens.”
It has been distributed worldwide, including screenings with the US State Department in Brazil, Israel and Taiwan.
A native of Woodstock and resident of Rhinebeck, Schwartz Delgado has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Georgetown University, a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard University, and is a member of the New York State bar.
Cumming is an award-winning actor and activist who has received more than 40 awards for his humanitarianism and social activism, three honorary doctorates, both the Great Scot and Icon of Scotland awards from his homeland and was made an Officer of the British Empire for his contributions to the arts and LBGT equality by the Queen, whose portrait was taken down when his was unveiled at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2014.
He lives in NewYork City with his husband, Grant Shaffer, and their two dogs, Jerry and Lala.
The gala is the Museum’s largest annual fundraising event and is critical to the Shaker Museum’s ability to continue to fulfill its mission to tell the story of the Shakers, including their furniture and architecture as well as their values of inclusion, innovation, integrity, and conviction.
Members of this year’s Gala Committee are Kathy Weiser, Bobby Beard, Tracy Brown, John Campbell, Paul Cassidy, Jonathan Kitt, and Suzanne Werner.
The Shaker Museumstewards the historic site in New Lebanon and has a campus in Old Chatham, which is open year-round by appointment, where the administrative offices, collections, library, and archives are housed. The museum’s collection of over 16,000 Shaker items is the most comprehensive collection of its kind in the world and may be viewed online at www.shakerml. org.