The New Harmony State Historic Site will soon benefit from $5 million in grants from the Lilly Endowment. This is for upgrades to infrastructure and programming.
The overall goal is to educate visitors on the spiritual and religious lives of the early founders.
Diane Sanders is assistant director at Historic New Harmony. She said their grant will fund the exploration of utopian religion and spirituality in New Harmony.
“So in the past our tours primarily focused on the buildings themselves,” she said. “I don't feel like visitors really get a good sense of what those two communities are all about, and what their beliefs were and how that influenced their everyday lives.”
She’s referring to the Harmonists and the Owenites whose 19th century utopian community experiments are still studied today.
Sanders says the culture of these communities are still relevant in 2025.
“We can learn from both the successes and failures of these communities,” she said. “I think what comes through in these different utopian societies is what their visions are and what their values are. And, you know, I think it's important for us to consider how, how we do those things today.”
She said Robert Owen, who purchased New Harmony from George Rapp had a vision for his community, but few practical details worked out. "The actual nuts and bolts of how he was going to run that community, were not considered," Sanders said.
Ultimately, the Owenite community only lasted two years. Still, they were trying to be a model community where education and social equality would flourish.
The Harmonists and Owenites attracted early feminists to their communities, focusing on women's suffrage.
The harmonists were entirely self sufficient, trading with other areas of the country.
The $5 million is comprised of two grants, to two separate organizations — Historic New Harmony for programming, and Indiana State Museum and Historic sites for infrastructure.
Indiana State Museum and Historic sites CEO Cathy Feree said, “the stories at New Harmony are unique, and what we've seen is that people are still very curious about those stories, and this grant from the Lilly Endowment allows us an opportunity to engage those visitors in a new and different way.”
The centerpiece will be an enhanced interpretive experience at Community House No. 2, with interactive technology to reveal these unique stories. Other funds will be used to collect related artifacts.
For Historic New Harmony, the process of implementing these changes will take a couple years. They’ll begin with hiring a consultant to help with their interpretive plan.
Infrastructure work should be complete in 2028.
More on the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites grant here
More on the Historic New Harmony programming grant here
Support independent journalism today. You rely on WNIN to stay informed, and we depend on you to make our work possible. Give to grow our local reporting today. Donate
