Featured Exhibitions
Learn about this summer's featured exhibitions!
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Stay up to date with our 2023 Calendar Nantucket Harbor Live Webcam and WeatherThe Whaling Museum is Open Daily 10am-5pm (through Oct 9)
Open Mon-Sat
10am-4pm
(Oct 10–Dec 30)
This oval basket is attributed to Davis Hall (1828–1906). After a career that included time as a sailor and fisherman, service in the Civil War, and duty as a volunteer life-saver for the Massachusetts Humane Society, Davis Hall joined the crew of the South Shoal lightship in 1877. It is unclear if he learned basketmaking aboard or already knew it.
By the 1880s, Hall’s baskets were regularly recognized at the annual agricultural fair, often in competition with the work of James Wyer. He is traditionally said to have developed the oval basket form.
Check out our Nantucket Lightship Baskets exhibit at Hadwen House to see this basket on display. Open Mon–Sat, at 96 Main Street, 10am–4pm, through October 9.
Image Credit:
Oval lightship basket, late 19th century
Wood, cane
Gift of John Reed Evans, A2019.2.1
Congratulations to Kathrina Marques, NHA’s Landscape and Grounds Manager, for being awarded the NPT Caroline A. Ellis Landscape & Garden Award!
The award recognizes gardens and landscapes on Nantucket that embody the island’s unique sense of place and celebrates the people who make them. Kathrina has been a cornerstone of the NHA for over 20 years and has applied her expertise as our horticulture and landscaping specialist to create numerous transformative spaces such as the Oldest House Kitchen Garden, the Greater Light Garden, the Hadwen House Garden. Thank you for your passion and hard work, Kathrina!
Since 1969, the Angler`s Club has encouraged a love of fishing through social gatherings and competitions. Its tournaments, sponsored throughout the year, include pond tournaments, ladies-only tournaments, and the Nantucket Billfish Tournament. The club hosts its members in a space at the head of Old South Wharf and has a certified weigh station where passers-by may chance to see huge fish suspended adjacent to the clubhouse. Younger anglers are encouraged to weigh their fish, in order to be eligible for monthly and yearly awards and prizes. The club also awards scholarships to the children and grandchildren of members.
Image: Members of the Nantucket Angler`s Club steam lobsters at their annual clambake in 1988
Gift of Mary G. Bachman (PH2-11-8)
Nantucketers developed the island’s first amenities for tourists in the late 1840s. In the late 1860s, they began concerted efforts to advertise Nantucket as an ideal “watering place.” A rush of hotel building and land speculation followed in the 1870s and 1880s, setting in motion an economy based on real estate sales, land development, and construction. Today, nearly all of the island’s economic activity, including house sales, building, landscaping, and hospitality services—even fishing for the bay scallop—is driven by the needs and demands of the summer resort.
Learn more about the island`s resort economy in the NHA`s exhibition Summer on Nantucket: A History of the Island Resort at the Whaling Museum, at 13 Broad Street, open daily, 10am–5pm.
Image Credits:
Waiting at Steamboat Wharf, ca. 1928
Courtesy of Joan Wilson Godeau and Vivian Wilson Richardson, SC642-14-5
It may be the last day of summer, but the season lives on in our featured exhibition, Summer on Nantucket: A History of the Island Resort. See it now through November 1 at the Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street, open daily, 10am–5pm.
Containing more than 200 artifacts from the NHA collection, this exhibition tells the story of Nantucket as a summer destination, from the opening of the first tourist hotels in the 1840s to the multi-billion-dollar real-estate, construction, and rental economy of today.
The exhibit begins with “Impressions of Summer,” a feast of paintings, trade signs, souvenirs, and other items capturing the flavor of Nantucket in high season. “The Resort Economy” traces the island’s transition from a whaling port to a vacation spot. “Must See, Must Do” explores beach and water recreation, entertainment and dining, and changing tourist activities across more than a century. “Where to Stay?” demonstrates how summer-home options have changed as more of the island has been developed. “Who’s Here?” features new acquisitions from the NHA’s costume and textile collections showing island summer fashions.
“It’s Not All Roses” recognizes the hard work seasonal employees and year-round residents put into making summer happen for everyone and explores some of the downsides to the island’s popularity and success: crowding, traffic, housing insecurity, and economic inequality. The exhibit concludes with “Winter,” a look at the continuation of island life after the crowds depart.
For centuries, a sandbar blocked the entrance to Nantucket harbor, hindering the passage of heavily laden vessels above a certain size. As early as 1827, islanders discussed using a mobile dry dock to float ships over the bar, based on a Dutch invention, the “ship camels,” from more than a century before. Shipping merchant Peter Folger Ewer (1800–55) revived the idea and, in early 1841, hired boatbuilders John G. Thurber and Jesse Crosby to make this working model, complete with a sample ship, to demonstrate the concept and attract investors.
The camels comprised two separate flat-bottomed hulls, each 135 feet long, linked by submerged chains. Positioned around a vessel and drawn together by the chains, the hulls would be pumped out, raising the assembly and its burden high enough to be towed across the bar by a steamboat. Each hull had a steam plant to power windlasses, pump, and a four-horsepower engine driving a propeller. The model shows the windlasses used to haul the chains, but the propellers, rudders, and smokestacks that were aboard the real camels are not shown, perhaps because they were not yet part of the design when this model was made.
Successfully funded and built, the full-sized camels carried their first ship over the bar in September 1842. They operated until 1849, by which time the reduced whaling traffic in the harbor could not sustain their expense. They were broken up in 1853.
The model of the Nantucket marine camels can be seen at the Whaling Museum`s Candle Factory, at 13 Broad Street, open daily, 10am–5pm.
Image Credit:
Models of the Nantucket Marine Camels and the ship Wm. H. Harrison, 1841
Thurber & Crosby, Nantucket.
Painted wood, 13½ x 92¼ x 59½ in. (camels), 501/2 x 100 x 20 in. (ship)
Gift of the Nantucket Atheneum, 2020.26.2–.3
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