Previous Exhibitions
Spring 2010
Gift of the Whale: The Inupiat Bowhead Hunt, A Sacred Tradition
The Iñupiat Eskimos have lived and hunted in the Arctic region of Alaska for 5,000 years. Central to their lifestyle and survival is the bowhead whale, a primary source not only of food, building materials, and barter goods, but also of art, legends, and cultural identity. The Iñupiat communities continue to pursue the bowhead in their annual hunt. They conduct the whale hunt under the strict supervision of federal and state agencies, and may strike between 60–80 whales in their annual season. The International Whaling Commission has allotted the Iñupiat a block quota of 255 bowhead whales from 2008–2012. The average annual number of whales landed has been forty-one over the past ten years.
The exhibition features the photography of Bill Hess, who documented the bowhead hunt in his book Gift of the Whale: The Iñupiat Bowhead Hunt, A Sacred Tradition. With patience and openness, Hess earned the trust of the Iñupiat community, and was invited to document the hunt. His photographs share a startling and deeply moving portrait of a community fully engaged in the pursuit of the bowhead whale. The exhibition will provide visitors with a glimpse into a contemporary society that owes its survival to the hunting of whales, not unlike the island of Nantucket at the height of the Golden Age of whaling.
The exhibition will include: Photographs by Bill Hess; the documentary film The Eskimo and The Whale; an Eskimo kayak and Arctic carvings in ivory from the NHA collections; the building of a traditional Umiak by wooden boatbuilder Corey Freedman; Iñupiat music; speakers/presenters Bill Hess, Robert Hellman, Bill Tramposch, Ben Simons, and an Iñupiat whaling captain; possible video exchange with Barrow, Alaska and Nantucket school children.
Check out Bill's blog, Wasilla, Alaska, by 300
Summer 2009
Harbor & Home: Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710-1850
Organized by Winterthur Museum & Country Estate
In 2009, the Nantucket Historical Association will host its first major traveling exhibition, Harbor & Home: Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710-1850, organized by Winterthur Museum & Country Estate. Harbor & Home will be a landmark in the institution’s history. The Winterthur exhibition focuses on a largely unstudied region of New England furniture—the area falling between Boston and Providence, which includes the unique seafaring communities of the Cape and Islands. Nantucket furniture, influenced by the restraint and elegant craftsmanship of the island’s Quaker community, is extremely rare, and has never been gathered together in one setting, nor studied with the scholarly intensity that Winterthur curator Brock Jobe and his colleagues have dedicated to produce the exhibition and the accompanying catalog. Remarkably, of the seventy-plus artifacts included in Winterthur’s exhibition, thirteen are from the collection of the Nantucket Historical Association—the greatest number of any institution after Winterthur. This prominence indicates the strength of the NHA collection, created in large part with the help of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association, our main collector’s group.
The NHA pieces featured in Harbor & Home will include the astronomical tall-case clock made by island genius Walter Folger Jr., recently voted one of the top 100 clocks in America; examples of the classic Nantucket Windsor chair; an outstanding inlaid candlestand by Heman Ellis; a cylinder-fall inlaid desk signed by Ellis; and a 4-slat ladderback Quaker Monthly Meeting side chair; to mention a few examples.
Harbor & Home: Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710-1850
was organized by
Winterthur Museum & Country Estate
Major support for Harbor & Home provided by:
Americana Foundation
Chilton Foundation
Croll Foundation
Elizabeth B. McGraw Foundation
Wodecroft Foundation
Anonymous
Additional support is provided by Mr. and Mrs. James R. Alexander, Mr. and Mrs Max N. Berry, Mrs. Georgina M. Bissell, Mr. Paul T. Clark, DBS Northeast Auctions, James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes, The Hohmann Foundation, Mrs. Greta B. Layton, The Honorable and Mrs. Michael T. Paul, John and Margaret Ruttenberg, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Ryder, Joseph E. and Norma G. Saul Foundation, Skinner Auctioneers & Appraisers, Gary R. Sullivan Antiques Inc., Mr. William W. Upton, Washington Decorative Arts Forum, Beth and Stanley Weiss, Mr. Kemble Widmer, Mr. and Mrs William F. Wiseman, and Anonymous.
The exhibition at the Nantucket Historical Association is made possible with support from Wilmington Trust FSB Massachusetts, Mr. and Mrs. Amos B. Hostetter Jr., Mr. & Mrs Hampton S. Lynch Jr., and Mr. and Mrs. Jay M. Wilson, and Anonymous.
Fall 2009
Camera's Coast: Historic Images of Ship & Shore in New England
This exhibition is a sampler of images from Historic New England's extensive collection of historic photographs documenting New England's rich maritime history, including Nantucket. The exhibition will be on display through November 8 and includes photographs of many traditional occupations -- from fishing, shipbuilding, and deep-water voyaging. Subjects depicted include square-riggers, coasting schooners, fishing vessels and fishing ports, small boats and large yachts, summer hotels and fishermen's shacks, fishermen, seaweed gatherers, and saltmarsh haymakers.
Curated by noted author and maritime historian William H. Bunting, The Camera's Coast illustrates life along the New England coast in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pioneering photographers represented in the exhibition include Nathaniel L. Stebbins, Henry G. Peabody, Baldwin Coolidge, and Emma L. Coleman.
Historic New England (originally the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities) is the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive regional heritage organization in the nation; the organization shares the region's history through vast collections, publications, public programs, museum properties, archives, and family stories that document more than 400 years of life in New England.
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Gay Head Light |
Boston Wharf, 9 January 1909 |
White Island Light |
Summer 2009
Landmarks of Nantucket!
What favorite Nantucket places would you miss if they suddenly vanished overnight?
We asked seventh-grade students at the Cyrus Peirce Middle School this question and worked with twenty-five of them after school this spring to record their own special places. Each student received a camera to capture images of Nantucket landmarks, worked with NHA and CPS staff, as well as professional-island photographers, and created a student-curated exhibition which will be on display at the Whaling Museum from May 3 to August 31.
Landmarks of Nantucket! is a collaboration involving the Nantucket Historical Association and the Nantucket Public Schools, specifically the Cyrus Peirce Middle School. Funding was provided by the Nantucket Golf Club Foundation.
Read more about the project in an article published in the Nantucket Independent.
Visit the Landmarks of Nantucket! 2009 digital exhibition.
Spring 2009
Keeping Time in Sag Harbor: Photographs by Stephen Longmire
In the 1840s, Nantucket and Sag Harbor vied for the honor of hosting New England’s second-largest whaling fleet — trailing New Bedford, a
latecomer to the fishery. Sag Harbor sailors went to school aboard Nantucket
whaleships soon after the American Revolution, learning the business of
deep-sea whaling. This was only fair, since Nantucket had taken some lessons
in shore whaling from Long Island Puritans a century earlier, in the late 1600s.
The ports share common histories, up to the present. Sag Harbor and Nantucket were boomtowns in the first half of the nineteenth century, pursuing a global trade in whale oil. Both island economies went belly up in the 1850s, once petroleum was discovered in Pennsylvania. Both turned to summer tourism, preserving the architectural record of their early affluence, despite devastating fires. Sag Harbor became a factory town; for a century, until 1981, it manufactured watchcases. During the nation’s recent housing boom, both resorts faced unprecedented development, stressing their landmark preservation laws. The business of economic speculation came home at last, and historic buildings were the chief commodity.
The photographs and texts in this exhibition are drawn from Stephen Longmire’s book Keeping Time in Sag Harbor, which marked the 300th anniversary of the New York port in 2007.
Winter 2008-2009
Nantucket Presidential Documents: From Washington to Roosevelt
American presidents have been concerned in the affairs of Nantucket island from the days of the foundation of the nation. The collections of the Nantucket Historical Association hold documents signed by nearly every president from Washington to Roosevelt. In honor of election year, the NHA will present an exhibition highlighting some of the more remarkable presidentially signed documents in the collection. Some of the documents of note include: appointment of Inspector of the Revenue for the Ports of Nantucket and Sherburne signed by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson; ships papers signed by James Madison, John Tyler, James Polk, James Buchanan, and others; Abraham Lincoln’s appointment of George Hussey Tracey as first lieutenant in the Fifteenth Infantry Regiment; a letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow; and a letter from Franklin Delano Roosevelt regarding the naming of a torpedo boat destroyer in honor of Nantucketer Reuben Chase. William III.
Summer 2008
'Sconset 02564: A Celebration of the Patchwork Village
May 23 – November 11, 2008
The exhibition features the history, architecture, personalities, and “character” of this unique village at the eastern end of Nantucket, often described as the most charming in America, following its evolution from a fishing village to a world-renowned summer resort.
Moby-Dick: Intaglio Prints by Janet Ball McGlinn
We are please to announce the opening of an exhibition of the Moby Dick Series of prints by Nantucket artist Janet (Ball) McGlinn (1915–1988). McGlinn was one of the most talented post-war artists working on Nantucket. She founded the Nantucket Printmakers with Schuyler Bradt in 1969 and taught printmaking, especially the technique of collograph, at the Artists Association of Nantucket when the workshop existed in the winter inside the blanketed lower gallery of the Kenneth Taylor Galleries. A Philadelphia native, McGlinn attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Art Students League in New York City. McGlinn’s stunning print series vividly highlight key scenes and characters from Moby-Dick, including the famous whale jawbone bar at the Spouter Inn, Moby Dick himself, Queequeg, Ahab, a cutting-in scene, and a lovely image of Ishmael the sole survivor at the end of the epic tale.
Click here to see a digital version of this exhibition.
Spring 2008
In Search of Giant Squid!
A Traveling Exhibition
of the Smithsonian Institution
In February 2008, the NHA will host its first traveling exhibition: In Search of Giant Squid. The giant squid, known as Architeuthis, is one of the ocean’s most elusive, mysterious, and mythologized creatures. It grew to fame as the sperm whale’s greatest rival―and its favorite meal. The NHA will present a Giant Squid Festival on Saturday March 8, 2008, featuring the world’s most renowned squid expert, Dr. Clyde Roper, as well as multiple family and children’s activities. The exhibition is supported, in part, by the Egan Maritime Foundation
and Novation Media.
In Search of Giant Squid was developed by the National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) in partnership with the Discovery Channel. This exhibition is made possible by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Summer 2007
Paintings of Rebecca Coffin
Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin (1850−1930) was born of Nantucket Quaker parentage in Brooklyn, New York. She studied at Vassar College, The Hague Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Students League in New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, in addition to traveling extensively in Europe and California. She was a pupil of Thomas Eakins, whose striking portrait of the artist is on display here. Beginning in the 1880s, Coffin began to summer regularly on Nantucket, painting brilliant genre scenes and portraits that capture the quaint and fading way of life of post-whaling Nantucket. After moving to Nantucket permanently in 1900, her artistic output declined, and she began to devote her energies to reviving instruction in handicrafts at the Coffin School. An eighth-generation descendant of original Nantucket settlers Tristram and Dionis Coffin, the artist returned to the island of her ancestors, leaving a legacy of outstanding paintings and devoted public service.
Summer-Fall 2007
Landmarks of Nantucket!
Over thirty Nantucket sixth, seventh and eighth graders participated in the NHA’s first student-curated photographic exhibition. Landmarks of Nantucket! showcases what the students consider to be their cherished Nantucket landmarks. This collaborative exhibition was organized by the NHA, Nantucket Preservation Trust and Sustainable Nantucket.
Click here to visit the digital exhibition
Summer-Fall 2007
The Nantucket Art Colony, 1920 – 1945
Featured the work of the group of painters and teachers who came to Nantucket and formed the “paradise and dream come true” for artists that became the Nantucket Art Colony. They worked from artists’ studios and gallery spaces created from the relics of Nantucket’s long-vanished whaling past – the cluster of shacks, shanties, boathouses, and old buildings that lay soaking in the sea air along Nantucket’s waterfront.
Click here to see a digital version of this exhibition.
Recent Acquisitions
A selection of new accessions donated to the NHA permanent collection, many of which were received during the 2006 season. Items range from an elegant mahogany tilt-top Nantucket candlestand attributed to Heman Ellis (1770-1816), to four large original watercolor whale murals painted by local artist C. Robert Perrin, to a surfboard from the island’s 1960s hippie era.
The Friends of The Nantucket Historical Association, a nonprofit group of collectors founded in 1986 to help purchase and preserve Nantucket art, artifacts, and manuscripts, have also donated many remarkable items to the NHA collections over the past fifteen years.
Spring 2007
Nantucket Nightmares
Richard C. Maloney was a teacher who retired to Nantucket in 1970, and began creating a series of editorial cartoons that appeared in the Inquirer and Mirror under the signature “Atropos” (one of the three sister Fates in Greek mythology). His cartoons provided satirical social commentary on Nantucket’s burgeoning development issues, from housing, to automobiles, to new buildings, to tourism. Many of his cartoons still have a strong resonance today, with the island still facing the difficulties that were beginning to appear in the early 1970s. The collection of original Maloney drawings and clippings included in the exhibition was generously donated by the artist’s granddaughter Catherine Maloney.
See a digital version of this exhibition.
Autumn 2006
Andrea Doria: 50th Anniversary
Commemorating the collision of the Italian luxury liner and the Swedish ship Stockholm, due south of Nantucket, the exhibition included articles from the disaster scene, including a life vest and suitcase. Artifacts from the Gifford family, Nantucket residents who were traveling aboard the Andrea Doria when the collision occurred, were also displayed.
June-December 2006
Susan
Boardman's Embroidered Narratives of
Notable Nantucket Women
The Nantucket
Historical Association has been proud to host two exhibitions
of artwork by Susan Boardman. The first was on display June-October
2002, and the second was displayed June-December 2006, both in
the Whitney Gallery of the NHA Research Library, 7 Fair Street.
Digital exhibitions based on these displays are available here.
Summer 2006
Signs
of the Times: Nantucket Signs
Peter Foulger Gallery in the Whaling Museum
An
exhibition of nearly one hundred Nantucket
business signs representing an encapsulated
history of life on Nantucket, from the late
nineteenth up to the late twentieth century,
includes some of the most recognizable and
fondly remembered establishments: The old
Downyflake, the North Shore Restaurant, Andy's
Diner, the Gordon Folger Hotel, Tavern on
the Moors, Straight Wharf Theatre, Northeast
Airlines, and numerous others. The collection
was a gift from Mrs. Florence E. Clifford
and her children-Debbi Deeley Culbertson,
Dusty Deeley Ramos, and J. Drew Deeley.
"The nostalgia evoked by 125 years of signage, viewed together in one location, will certainly touch many who recall these great signs and the old businesses they represent," said Niles Parker, Interim Executive Director and Robyn and John Davis Curator. "We are very grateful to Mrs. Clifford and her family for this wonderful contribution to the preservation of Nantucket history."
See a digital version of this exhibition
