Scrimshaw removed from storage prior to placement in new Scrimshaw Gallery

The weekend kicks off on Friday, May 11, from 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. with the third annual Nautical Antiques Show featuring for sale high quality marine antiques including scrimshaw, nautical instruments and tools, whaling logbooks, ship models, photos, paintings, prints, New Bedford memorabilia, and more in the Jacobs Family Gallery. Entry fee to the Nautical Antiques Show only is $5, or free with museum admission or membership.

On Friday evening from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., a cocktail reception in the Dutch Gallery will include a VIP preview of the new scrimshaw exhibit.

On Saturday, May 12, registration begins at 9:00 a.m. with plenary sessions starting at 10:00 a.m., to include, “William Sizer, Scrimshaw Artist: A Comprehensive Review” with John Miklos (Chicago); “The Latest Scrimshavological Forensic Analysis of the Anonymous and Mysterious Mantelpiece Maker,” with Donald C. Boger, M.D. (Los Angeles); “Remarks on Scrimshaw,” with Captain Thomas Conley (Chicago); buffet luncheon in the Jacobs Family Gallery.

Saturday afternoon sessions include “Scrimshaw: The Artist’s Eye,” with Ryan Cooper, scrimshaw artist (Cape Cod); “Market Report” with Andrew Jacobson (Ipswich, Mass.); “The California Penal Code and the California Crackdown,” with James Vaccarino, J.D., Scrimshaw Forensics® team; a panel discussion on the California Crackdown, with  Hon. Paul E. Vardeman, J.D. (Kansas City), Ken Brown (San Francisco), Rod Cardoza (San Diego), Chuck DeLuca (York, Maine and San Rafael, Calif.), Andrew Jacobson, and Stuart M. Frank, Ph.D. (moderator).

At 5:30 p.m., a cash bar will be followed by a banquet dinner at 7:00 p.m. in the Jacobs Family Gallery. The evening’s keynote, titled “Matchmaking” will be presented by Jack H.T. Chang, M.D. (Denver) at 8:00 p.m. in the Cook Memorial Theater.

On Sunday, May 13 at 10:30 a.m.: A Salute to Don Ridley: “Scrimshaw Fakes, Dangerous and Not So Dangerous,” with Stuart M. Frank in the Cook Memorial Theater; 11:15 a.m., VIP tour and discussion of “Seven Continents, Seven Seas,” with Stuart Frank, Wattles Family Gallery; lunch is on your own.

On Sunday at 2:00 p.m., a new exhibit, “Scrimshaw: Shipboard Art of the Whalers” opens to the public. The largest permanent exhibit of its kind, it coincides with the launch of a major new book on scrimshaw, titled “Ingenious Contrivances, Curiously Carved: Scrimshaw in the New Bedford Whaling Museum.” by Stuart M. Frank. Published by David R. Godine, Boston, this definitive 400-page reference to the world’s largest scrimshaw collection includes more than 700 photographs by Richard Donnelly. Dr. Frank will be available to sign copies of the book. Light refreshments will be served.

Registration fee for Scrimshaw Weekend includes admission to the museum, all open galleries, nautical antiques show, all plenary sessions, Scrimshaw VIP Preview, exhibit opening, book launch, all scheduled meals, and refreshments: $370 (museum members $330). Tickets to Saturday’s banquet only: $75 each.

Admission to the Sunday opening of the scrimshaw exhibit and book launch only: regular admission rates apply. In honor of Mother’s Day, mothers are admitted free when accompanied by at least one member of her family.

For more information or to register, please contact visitor services at (508) 997-0046, ext. 100 or email: frontdesk@whalingmuseum.org. For the full schedule of events and program updates, please visit the museum website, www.whalingmuseum.org.

Special hotel room rates are available for Scrimshaw Weekend attendees. Call for details: Fairfield Inn and Suites New Bedford (Tel. 774.634.2000), and Hampton Inn New Bedford/Fairhaven (Tel. 508.990.8500).

The New Bedford Whaling Museum gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Northeast Auctions, LLC of Portsmouth, NH, and the Maine Antique Digest.

Lyman B. Waterman, Jr. (left) presented Dr. Bjørn Basberg (right) of Bergen, Norway, with the 27th annual L. Byrne Waterman Award during the 36th annual Whaling History Symposium

The New Bedford Whaling Museum announced today the presentation of the 27th annual L. Byrne Waterman Award to Dr. Bjørn Basberg, an industrial archaeologist, distinguished historian, and professor of economics at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration in Bergen, Norway.

The award was established in 1985 at the Kendall Whaling Museum in Sharon, Massachusetts, by Lyman Byrne Waterman, Sr., of Baltimore, Maryland, and was transferred to the New Bedford Whaling Museum in 2001 when the two museums merged collections.  The award has been presented each October at the museum’s annual Whaling History Symposium, “in recognition of outstanding contributions to research and pedagogy in the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences,” and has been called the Nobel Prize of Whaling History. Lyman B. Waterman, Jr. presented the award.

Professor Basberg travelled from Norway to speak at this year’s symposium on “Mapping and Recording the Norwegian Antarctic Whaling Stations onSouth Georgia” but was not informed before hand that he was designated to receive the award.  He spoke in the morning and was surprised by the afternoon presentation of the award, which cited his “outstanding contributions, in action and in print, to the industrial and economic history, archaeology, and preservation of historic whaling sites inSouth Georgia.” This was in acknowledgment of his having surveyed, charted, mapped, and published extensively about the once thriving but now abandoned complex of Norwegian and Anglo-Norwegian shore-whaling factories on the island of South Georgia, the threshold of Antarctica.  Industrial-scale whaling was prosecuted there by Norwegian and British interests throughout the twentieth century, until the 1960s.  And, famously, it was there in 1917 that Ernest Shackleton’s failed polar expedition fetched up on their heroic open-boat escape from the Antarctic ice.

Professor Basberg has been an Advisory Curator visiting Fellow on several prior occasions at both whaling museums.  He also been a visiting scholar at Brown University, has co-hosted two international whaling history symposia in Norway, and serves on the governing board of the British foundation charged with preserving the historic sites and natural environment of South Georgia, including the world’s southernmost museum.  In fact, the founding director of theSouth Georgia Museum, W. Nigel Bonner, was the recipient of a posthumous Waterman Award in 1994.  Among Waterman laureates when the award was still at the Kendall are two Dr. veterans of the New Bedford Whaling Museum staff, John R. Bockstoce (1992) and Virginia M. Adams (1996).  Other Waterman Award recipients include artist/naturalist Richard Ellis (1991), bestselling historians Joan Druett (1999), Nathaniel Philbrick (2001), and Eric Jay Dolin (2007), and the late scientist William E. Schevill of Woods Hole, the first to record whale “songs” in their natural habitat (1988).

The Whaling History Symposium, founded in 1975, is the world’s only regular international forum for the presentation and discussion of new ideas, pioneering research, and fresh insights into the history, fine arts, humanities, and sciences of whales and whaling. It is made possible in part by the Samuel D. Rusitzky Fund.

36th Annual Whaling History Symposium webpage.

The New Bedford Whaling Museum Apprenticeship program offers an opportunity to high school students with an interest in a variety of topics, who excel academically and express interest in gaining work and college readiness experience, while earning a competitive wage. The Apprenticeship program will use museum resources as well as those of regional academic and scientific institutions to increase the knowledge base and practical experiences of high school students in New Bedford while enhancing their preparedness to continue their studies in these topics upon entering college. Full text of the descriptive letter can be found below.

NBWM Apprenticeship Letter Fall_2011

2011_2012 NBWM Apprentice Application

The program takes place during two sessions during the academic year and one summer session. The school year sessions will run from September – January and February – May. Students will work from 3:00 – 5:00 during these sessions, four days a week. The summer session will take place over eight weeks from July – August, with students working from 10:00 – 4:00.

Interested students should fill out an application form and return it, and a copy of the most recent report card, by Sept 21, to:
Robert Rocha, Science Director, New Bedford Whaling Museum, 18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, MA 02740, or to the
Dean of Students / Co-op Coordinator / College and Career Advisor at your school

For further information contact Mr. Rocha, (508) 717-6849 or rrocha@whalingmuseum.org

The Zeiterion Performing Arts Center and the New Bedford Whaling Museum have announced a coordinated partnership designed to heighten New Bedford’s profile as a cultural and historical destination utilizing “Moby-Dick” as a universal identifier for the city in a four-month program titled “Moby!”.

The partnership between two of New Bedford’s leading cultural institutions will focus on author Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, “Moby-Dick,” considered the greatest work in American literature. During four months of related programs and activities, “Moby!” will encompass the many facets of Melville’s creation, spanning whaling history, literature, theater, and popular culture.

“Moby!” Schedule:

Wednesday, October 19
Moby! Preview: “Why Read Moby-Dick?”
Lecture and book signing with Nathaniel Philbrick. Free. Sponsored by Baker Books.

Thursday, November 3
Welcome Reception for the Mayor of Youghal, County Cork, Ireland.
Zeiterion Performance Center, 6:00 p.m.

Film Screening: “Moby Dick” (1956) Starring Gregory Peck, Directed by John Huston.
Zeiterion Performance Center, 7:00 p.m.

Friday, November 4
Exhibit opening of “Imagining Moby!”
New Bedford Whaling Museum, 5:00 p.m.
An exhibit including original works by Leonard Baskin, Richard Ellis & Rockwell Kent demonstrating the ways artists have explored aspects of this great American novel.

Stage Performance “Moby Dick” by Gare St. Lazare Players of Ireland.
Zeiterion Performance Center, 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, November 5
Moby! Cartoon Festival
11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m., Cook Memorial Theater, New Bedford Whaling Museum
A children’s film festival of animated films inspired by Moby-Dick, including an animated puppet version, a Spanish version, and others.  Free.

Stage Performance “Moby Dick” by the Gare St. Lazare Players of Ireland.
3:00 p.m. Matinee, Zeiterion Performance Center

Moby! Memorabilia Exhibitions
5:00 p.m., Cook Memorial Theater, New Bedford Whaling Museum

The Mayor of Youghal will present a slide show of pictures from the filming of Moby-Dick in Ireland in 1955.  The Whaling Museum and the Zeiterion will present an exhibit on memorabilia from the New Bedford World Premiere of “Moby Dick” on June 26, 1956. Free.

Stage Performance “Moby Dick” by Gare St. Lazare Players of Ireland.
Zeiterion Performance Center, 7:30 p.m.

Monday, November 14
Moby-Dick Marathon Reader Call-in Day
Anyone may call in to request an 8-10 minute reading slot, beginning at 12:01 a.m. Be sure to give us three alternative times when you could read. Call 508-997-0046 x151.

Friday, January 6
Moby-Dick Marathon Preview
5:30 p.m. Pre-Marathon Buffet Dinner & cash bar
7:15 p.m. Museum Theater, Free Pre-Marathon Lecture: “Moby-Dick in American Popular Culture” with Melville scholar, Dr. Timothy  W. Marr. After Nov. 15, call 508-997-0046 ext. 100 to purchase tickets for the buffet dinner. The lecture is free.

Saturday, January 7
“Stump the Scholars!”
10:00 a.m., Cook Memorial Theater
As a prelude to the Moby-Dick, Marathon, the Museum hosts a truly Melville-centric event along the same lines as National Public Radio’s popular program, “Wait, wait, don’t tell me.” You will have the opportunity to quiz Melville Society scholars on all matters Moby-Dick and Melville. No questions are too tough. Free.

Saturday, January 7
16th Annual Moby-Dick Marathon
Noon, New Bedford Whaling Museum
The Moby-Dick Marathon kicks off the non-stop reading of the great American classic. Come at any time; leave at any time. All are welcome to this 25-hour event commemorating the anniversary of 21-year old Herman Melville’s voyage from New Bedford harbor aboard the whale ship Acushnet in 1841. Free.

February 22-25
“Moby-Dick” the Opera
Whaling Museum Members’ Trip to the West Coast to see the critically acclaimed new opera by Jake Heggie, “Moby Dick,” at the San Diego Opera House. Join the Whaling Museum for three days of activities, VIP receptions, and a visit to the San Diego opera to see their premier of Moby Dick! Contact Alison Smart for more details: (508) 997-0046 ext. 115 or asmart@whalingmuseum.org

For more information, contact:

Arthur Motta
Director, Marketing & Communications
New Bedford Whaling Museum
(508) 997-0046, ext. 153
amotta@whalingmuseum.org

Rosemary Gill
Assistant Director
Zeiterion Performing Arts Center
(508) 997-5664
rgill@zeiterion.org

Twitter hash-tag #MobyNB

Now cast your vote for New Bedford, voting ends on March 15th.

Since 2000, the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Dozen Distinctive Destination program has recognized cities and towns that offer an authentic visitor experience by combining dynamic downtowns, cultural diversity, attractive architecture, cultural landscapes and a strong commitment to historic preservation, sustainability and revitalization. In each community, residents have joined together and taken action to protect their town’s character.

Scientists from NOAA Fisheries Service and its state and nonprofit partners successfully used at-sea chemical sedation to help cut the remaining ropes from a young North Atlantic right whale on January 15 off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Fla. The sedative given to the whale allowed the disentanglement team to safely approach the animal and remove 50 feet of rope which was wrapped through its mouth and around its flippers.

The sedative given to the whale allowed the disentanglement team to safely approach the animal. (Photo credit: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission)

This is only the second time a free-swimming whale has been successfully sedated to enable disentanglement efforts. The first time a whale was successfully sedated and disentangled was in March 2009 off the coast of Florida.

“Our recent progress with chemical sedation is important because it’s less stressful for the animal, and minimizes the amount of time spent working on these animals while maximizing the effectiveness of disentanglement operations,” said Jamison Smith, Atlantic Large Whale Disentanglement Coordinator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “This disentanglement was especially complex, but proved successful due to the detailed planning and collective expertise of the many response partners involved.”

Definition and Etymology:
These days, “scrimshaw” is taken to refer to all kinds of carving and engraving on ivory, bone, sea shells, antler, and cow horn. However, in its original context as a traditional shipboard pastime of 19th-century mariners, scrimshaw refers to the indigenous, occupationally-rooted art form of the whalers, the defining characteristic of which is use of the hard byproducts of the whale fishery itself – sperm whale ivory, walrus ivory, baleen (erroneously called whalebone), and skeletal whale bone, often used often in combination with other “found” materials. The origin and etymology of the term scrimshaw is unknown and has been disputed, but various forms of it – such as scrimsshander, skrimshonting, and skrimshank – began to appear in American whalemen’s parlance in the early 19th century. The term originally referred to the production of sailors’ hand-tools and practical implements, such as seam rubbers, fids, belaying pins, and thole pins, mostly made for the ship during working hours; but it soon came to signify objects made by whalemen–and, to a lesser extent, by tars in the naval and merchant services– primarily for their own recreation and amusement, intended mostly as mementos for folks at home.

Materials:
“Hard byproducts” of whaling were flotsam and jetsam of the fishery – parts of the whale that had little or no commercial value and thus could be given over to the sailors for their own pleasurable diversions. Sperm whale teeth could be polished to a high gloss, then engraved with pictures to which lampblack and colored pigments could be applied. Or they could be carved in relief or in full round, to produce sculptural forms, human and animal figures, finials, handles, tools, inlay, and all manner of ornaments for wooden boxes, canes, and other objects.

Likewise walrus ivory. The walrus hunt had been associated with whaling since medieval times, and even where the whalers did not take walrus themselves (as was typically the case in the 19th century), tusks were obtained by barter with Northern peoples in Canada, Siberia, and Alaska, and were often utilized to scrimshaw. Virtually anything that could be made of whale ivory could also be crafted from walrus ivory.

The characteristics of whale and walrus ivory are similar. The advantages of sperm whale teeth are (in especially fine specimens) its milky smoothness, homogeneity of texture, breadth, and rich color. However, a length of 20 cm (or 8 inches) is uncommonly large for a sperm whale tooth; 28 cm (11 inches) is just about the record. Walrus tusks, on the other hand, frequently range up to 70 cm (about 27 inches) or longer: they not only provide a larger surface for pictorial engraving, but can be cut and sliced and combined into larger objects or larger ornaments, including the slats for swifts (yarn-winders), shafts and handles for pie crimpers, even the bars and slats for elaborate birdcages.

Baleen is the keratin plates in the mouths of the odontocete or so-called baleen whales, which includes all of the great whale species except sperm whales. Biologically, these keratin plates are larger manifestations of the same material as human fingernails, animal hoofs, and bovine horn. As applied to scrimshaw, baleen tends to be sinewy, brittle, and in many ways difficult to work; it is also vulnerable to larvae parasites. But it is also reasonably pliable, which is the basis of its commercial viability for corset stays, umbrella ribs, and skirt hoops. Properly handled, it is ideally suited for corset busks (staybusks) or bent-sided round and oval ditty-boxes. A deft artisan can also incise it effectively with pictures.

Through the centuries, each of these products had commercial value from time to time, and so were only intermittently available to whalers for their own hobby work. Baleen had many commercial applications, but a baleen surplus in Holland in the 17th century eroded its commercial value, affording mariners an opportunity to obtain pieces of baleen for their own use. Skeletal whale bone was used for architecture and artisanry by Norse and Basque whaling pioneers in medieval times; but, beginning in the 17th century, pelagic whalers – who were primarily concerned with oil and secondarily with baleen – discarded the bones as worthless deadweight. So eventually bone, too, came into the hands of whaleman-artists.

Whalemen often used the basic materials that define scrimshaw – sperm whale ivory, walrus ivory, baleen, and skeletal bone – in combination with other “found” materials, typically bits and pieces of wood, metal, sea shells, tortoise shell, and cloth. Latin American coins, in wide circulation in the Pacific, could be fashioned into finials and fixtures. The characteristic basic black pigment was lampblack, a suspension of carbon in oil, the product of combustion, easily obtained from the shipboard tryworks (oil cookery) or from ubiquitous oil lamps. (The notion that whalemen used tobacco juice as a pigment for scrimshaw is purely fanciful: it isn’t black, it doesn’t work, and not even a single example has been documented.) Colored pigments for polychrome (multi-colored) works included verdigris (a tenacious green deposit naturally forming on copper and brass), various homemade fruit and vegetable dyes, and commercially-produced india or china ink.

Scrimshaw Precursors
Whale ivory, bone, and baleen precursors to whalemen’s scrimshaw appeared almost from the beginning of medieval European whaling: domestic implements carved out of skeletal bone by Vikings in Norway, game pieces and chessmen made at Paris, Cologne, and elsewhere, and an impressive inventory of 11th- and 12-century votive carvings produced in English and Danish monasteries. Walrus tusks from Norway became a cheaper substitute for elephant ivory (which was imported to Europe from Africa by Venetian and Genoese merchants), and found its way into the hands of artisans in Central Europe, England, Turkey, Russia, and Spain. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Dutch and German whaling captains occasionally used baleen to make oval boxes, mangles (for folding cloth), and votive objects commemorating a family event or a successful hunt.

The Advent of Whalemen’s Scrimshaw
It was not until after the Napoleonic Wars that the meteoric rise of whaling, resulting in longer voyages, larger crews, and over-manned ships, created an atmosphere for scrimshaw to flourish on a large scale. A few bone swifts, straightedges, and hand-tools survive from the 18th century; but the earliest known works of engraved pictorial scrimshaw date from circa 1817-21. Contrary to popular belief in many quarters, which ascribes the origin of pictorial scrimshaw to American hands, the first practitioners to adorn sperm whale teeth were British South Sea whalers, a few of whose pioneering works survive in the Museum collection. The first piece to bear a date is elaborately but anonymously inscribed from the whaleship Adam of London, date 1817. The first known American scrimshaw artist, and one of the best, was Edward Burdett (1805-1833), who began scrimshandering circa 1824. The first American piece to bear a date is a recently-discovered tooth engraved by Edward Burdett aboard the ship Origon of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, in 1827. The most famous early scrimshaw artist is Burdett’s fellow-Nantucketer Frederick Myrick (1808-1862), who produced 36 or more so-called “Susan’s Teeth” aboard the Nantucket ship Susan during 1828-29: he was the first ever to sign and date some of his work. These pioneers were the vanguard of a tremendously productive generation of American, British, and Australian scrimshaw artists who followed in the 1830s and ’40s, the Golden Age of scrimshaw.

Pictorial Scrimshaw
From the orthodox ship-portraits and whaling scenes pioneered in the 1820s, the pictorial repertoire expanded dramatically in the 1830s to include virtually every kind of image and theme. Sedate female figures and family groupings were persistent favorites. Patriotic subjects, naval scenes, symbolic figures like Britannia, Columbia, and Hope, and portraits of Great Men and Women – George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, Napoleon, Josephine Bonaparte, and Jenny Lind – abounded. The scrimshanders’ eye took in all subjects and themes, Biblical, mythological, and theatrical, zoölogical and botanical, urban, rural, religious, and ecclesiastical, domestic, foreign, exotic, and banal.

Diversity of Scrimshaw
It is the remarkable diversity and intricate ingenuity of shipboard scrimshaw that drew the comments of contemporaneous observers. Reverend Henry Cheever remarked that “skimshander” is a term for “the ways in which whalemen busy themselves when making passages, and in the intervals of taking whales, in working up sperm whales’ jaws and teeth and right whale bone into boxes, swifts, reels, canes, whips, folders, stamps, and all sorts of things, according to their ingenuity” (The Whale and His Captors, 1850). Herman Melville, a veteran whaleman, if not actually a scrimshaw artist himself, describes the genre as “lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies’ busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material in the hours of ocean leisure” (Moby Dick, 1851). There were indeed many types, produced primarily as mementos and souvenirs for the whalemen themselves, and especially as gifts for loved ones at home.

The swift (an elaborate yarn-winder), a distinctively American form, was an early and persistent manifestation. Pie crimpers and kitchen implements proliferated. Corset busks (staybusks) and canes (walking sticks) were epidemic: whaleman John Martin, homeward-bound with a full catch in the Lucy Ann of Wilmington, Delaware, in 1844, wrote whimsically in his journal , “There are enough canes in this ship to supply all the old men in Wilmington.” Ditty boxes, workboxes, and tabletop chests could be extremely simple or highly ornate, made entirely of baleen or bone, or a combination of materials and inlays, sometimes surmounted with a human or animal figure carved in full round. Aromatic boxes of precious Polynesian sandalwood, often exquisitely inlaid with ivory, abalone, and silver, were constructed by many painstaking seamen. Among the most elaborate creations were “architectural” or “architectonic” forms: pocketwatch stands, usually shaped like miniature “grandfather” clocks (tall clocks), a nighttime resting place for dad’s gold timepiece. Sewing boxes, typically built of wood or bone, often lavishly fitted with drawers, spools for thread, pincushions, and other accessories, were characteristically ornately decorated with inlay, finials, fobs, and fixtures of marine ivory, sea shell, tortoise shell, and silver. A skeletal-bone and or wood-and-bone birdcage could consume countless months of work at sea. Banjos and violins with ivory and bone fittings were also in the inventory of the musically inclined and manually skilled.

In fact, many whalemen were quite skilled – ship’s carpenters and coopers perhaps especially so. Having been trained in the trades, their dexterity and technical competence would have been substantially better honed than average; certainly their per capita scrimshaw productivity was disproportionately high. Nor was scrimshandering limited to the whalers themselves. Wives and children, who sometimes accompanied whaling captains to sea, also produced scrimshaw in significant numbers. Some of the women – like Sallie Smith, wife of Captain Frederick Howland Smith of Dartmouth, Massachusetts – produced work to as high a standard as their male counterparts.

The defining characteristic of scrimshaw is the occupational context of process, materials, and personnel. Its aesthetic, iconographical, and technical characteristics, exhibiting trends and tendencies that mostly followed fashion ashore, place it foursquare within the decorative mainstream. But its vivacious florescence within a single, sequestered occupational group render it unique able to impart insights into the life and times of sea labor in the Age of Sail. The scrimshaw itself was produced in large measure with the artist’s mind fixed on the people back home, not only as the intended recipients of scrimshaw gifts, but also as the beneficiaries of his newly-acquired sailors’ vision of the wide world. The genre, born of the sea, constantly looks homeward to shore.

Join us on Jan. 29th for ‘Scrimshaw 101′ . Tweet this one day course with this hashtag: #scrimshaw101

Looking for the perfect gift? Delight your friends and family with an entire year of FREE admission to the New Bedford Whaling Museum.  Members also receive a 10% discount in the Museum store, invitations to members-only events, members-only mailings such as The Bulletin from Johnny Cake Hill and so much more.   Visit the New Bedford Whaling Museum today to purchase a gift membership for your friends or family and receive a complimentary $10 gift card!

To learn more about the Whaling Museum’s membership program, visit our website or contact Amy Morrison at (508) 997-0046, ext. 150.

“What has changed is the 107-year-old New Bedford Whaling Museum. Over the past year, it completed three ambitious renovation and installation projects, enhancing its display of an outstanding collection of art, artifacts and manuscripts numbering more than 750,000 objects. It added 2,000 square feet of exhibit space.

Over time, the institution will be transformed from what president James Russell calls “a temple to Yankee whaling” to a cosmopolitan center for the study of New Bedford as a multicultural melting pot and economic powerhouse, past and, if community leaders have their way, future.”

Read the full article