A musical celebration of all things nautical, presented in honor of Herman Melville’s birthday. The program includes Malcolm Arnold’s Three Shanties, George Chadwick’s Three Sea Sketches, hornpipes (sailor’s dances) from Water Music by George Frederic Handel, as well as music of Scott Joplin, a hot tango by Astor Piazzolla, and a medley of George M. Cohan’s greatest hits.

Friday, July 30, 5:00 pm:
Melville Society free public lecture: Discovering Whales, Petroglyphs, and Moby-Dick on the Olympic Peninsula in June 2008, with Robert K. Wallace

This illustrated talk will highlight some of the discoveries Robert Wallace made on the Makah Indian Reservation of the Olympic Peninsula during a two-week trip with landscape painter Kevin Muente. Wallace will emphasize his encounters with gray whales, a humpback whale, and ancient Ozette petroglyphs in a sequence of events that brought Melville’s Moby-Dick to life before his very eyes. Robert K. Wallace is a founder of the Melville Society Cultural Project at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.  He is author of Melville and Turner, Frank Stella’s Moby-Dick, and Douglass and Melville. He has taught Literature and the Arts at Northern Kentucky University since 1972

Saturday, July 31, 10am-2pm
HERMAN MELVILLE FAMILY DAY

You’re Invited to a whale of a party celebrating Herman Melville’s birthday! It features free activities for kids 12 years and younger on the plaza and in selected galleries. The day includes music by the Sea Chantey Chorus, art projects, historical characters, story readings, fun learning activities, kids art show, and birthday cake.

Ongoing activities:
Make whale hats, bookmarks & whale magnets
See the new 15-minute film, Around the World!
Take a new iPod tour
Story readings: pop-up kids’ Moby-Dick, and The Whale and the Snail
Kids’ Art Show
Hourly drawings to win family membership

The article by Beth Perdue , excerpted below, appears in full on SouthCoastTODAY.com

“Fairhaven Man Repays Debts with Weekend Rescue”

FAIRHAVEN, MA — They say what goes around comes around but, for one Fairhaven man, the chance to help a stranded windsurfer in the same spot he himself had been rescued three years earlier was a sweeter kind of payback.

Michael Dyer was one of a group of West Island beach-goers who came to the rescue of a Providence man after he fell off his windsurf board Sunday, helping him stay afloat until firefighters arrived.

A maritime curator at the whaling museum, Dyer was at the shore to catch some bluefish before dinner. He had just arrived when he learned the man, later identified as Bill Braden, 66, was in the water, unable to reach his board.

(NEW BEDFORD, MA) – Robert K. Wallace will present “Discovering Whales, Petroglyphs, and Moby-Dick on the Olympic Peninsula in June 2008” on Friday, July 30 at 5:00 p.m. in the museum theater.

Free and open to the public, this illustrated talk will highlight some of the discoveries Robert Wallace made on the Makah Indian Reservation of the Olympic Peninsula during a two-week trip with landscape painter Kevin Muente.  Wallace will emphasize his encounters with gray whales, a humpback whale, and ancient Ozette petroglyphs in a sequence of events that brought Melville’s Moby-Dick to life before his very eyes.

Robert K. Wallace is a founder of the Melville Society Cultural Project at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.  He is author of Melville and Turner, Frank Stella’s Moby-Dick, and Douglass and Melville. He has taught Literature and the Arts at Northern Kentucky University since 1972.

For more information, contact:

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

Eric writes, “Greg’s 2002  Ph.D. thesis at MIT was titled ‘Forging Ahead: The Ames Family of Easton, Massachusetts and Two Centuries of Industrial Enterprise 1635-1861‘. In it, he traced the trajectory of one Oliver Ames, born in 1779 and trained as a blacksmith, who took up the business of making shovels and in the process evolved from ‘artisan and craftsman to industrialist.’  In this superb work, Greg (echoing and reinforcing the writings of Philip Scranton) concluded that the Industrial Revolution was no revolution at all.  ‘It was a gradual and fluid evolution from one way of doing business to another’ led by men who maintained many of their artisan traditions and long-held beliefs about family and community.”

Eric continues to explore the dominant narrative concept as it applies in our world today. Read the full article…

A day packed with fun for families & kids, 12yrs. and younger

Herman Melville Family Day will feature many free activities for children 12 years and younger on the plaza and in selected galleries from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. to celebrate Herman Melville’s 191st birthday. The event features music performed by members of the New Bedford Harbor Sea Chantey Chorus, art projects, historical characters, story readings, fun learning activities, kids art show, and a birthday cake, too.

Ongoing activities include making whale hats, whale tail bookmarks and whale magnets. A new 15-minute film, Around the World!, will play throughout the day in the Cook Memorial Theater and the museum’s new iPod tours will also make their public debut. Story reading in the whale galleries will include a pop-up children’s version of Moby-Dick, and The Whale and the Snail. A children’s art show in the Jacobs Family Gallery will include art awards in several categories. Hourly drawings to win a family membership to the Whaling Museum will also be given.

Special activities are scheduled throughout the day. From 10:00 a.m. to noon, kids can make their own floatable toy model of Cap’n Ahab’s ship, the Pequod. Wading pools on the plaza will allow even the youngest shipwrights to test their vessel’s seaworthiness before they take them home. At 11:00 a.m., a kids’ poetry workshop will be offered. At 11:30 a.m. whaling wives, Ruth and Abby from the 1840s, will visit with children. At noon, the museum’s youth apprentices will lead a special sperm whale activity. From 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., kids can paint a large whale statue to look like Moby Dick.

At 1:30 p.m., members of the New Bedford Harbor Sea Chantey Chorus will perform toe-tapping tunes from Melville’s day and other fun favorites. At 2:00 p.m., the Chorus will belt out a timber-shivering rendition of Happy Birthday, with kids of all ages invited to join in the singing, and enjoy a slice of birthday cake.  Children must be accompanied by an adult.

Herman Melville Family Day is hosted by the Museum’s education department in partnership with the Melville Society Cultural Project, New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

“Discovering Whales, Petroglyphs, and Moby-Dick on the Olympic Peninsula in June 2008”

New Bedford Whaling Museum Theater, Friday, July 30, 5 – 6 p. m.

Admission Free

By Robert K. Wallace

This illustrated talk will highlight some of the discoveries Robert Wallace made on the Makah Indian Reservation of the Olympic Peninsula during a two-week trip with landscape painter Kevin Muente. Wallace will emphasize his encounters with gray whales, a humpback whale, and ancient Ozette petroglyphs in a sequence of events that brought Melville’s Moby-Dick to life before his very eyes.

Robert K. Wallace is a founder of the Melville Society Cultural Project at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. He is author of Melville and Turner, Frank Stella’s Moby-Dick, and Douglass and Melville. He has taught Literature and the Arts at Northern Kentucky University since 1972 and is a past president of the Melville Society.

Join us for a fun-filled day celebrating Herman Melville’s birthday! Have fun with our exciting science activities and art projects, along with a reading of a children’s version of Moby Dick and live music. The winners of the Melville Art Contest will be announced and we will end the day with some birthday cake!  Activities for the birthday celebration are FREE and open to the public!

Date: Saturday, July 31, 2010

Time: 10:00am – 2:00pm

Location: New Bedford Whaling Museum

For more information, please contact Jenn Cruz at jcruz@whalingmuseum.org or (508) 997-0046 x117.

Freshen up your walls with custom archival print reproductions of artwork that you fell in love with while at the museum. We invite you to visit the museum store or to browse through the expansive gallery online at 1000Museums.

It’s a familiar story – you visit a museum and you’re so taken with one of the many works of art on display that you want a reproduction to hang in your home.  You search in the museum store and on the Internet, but all you can find (if you are lucky) is a reproduction that is either printed as a poster or in a size that just won’t work for the “the spot” selected in your home or office. Until now.

The New Bedford Whaling Museum has chosen 1000Museums as a partner to supply custom archival print reproductions of the museum’s permanent collection of artworks and historic photographs. The new program offers several options to art and history lovers that weren’t available in the past.

Beginning with a modest 21 images, 1000Museums has established a page on their website that not only displays pertinent information about the museum but also a gallery of the images available for print. From there, the art lover can select an archival print of his or her favorite artwork or photograph. The prints are offered in 4 standard sizes: unframed or framed, starting as low as $19.  Custom Archival Print means that the artwork is produced by an 11-color digital inkjet machine on 100% cotton rag paper that work in concert to produce color that is stunning. Further adding to the uniqueness of the print, no print is offered until a proof has been approved by the museum’s curatorial staff. Once it has been approved, the final product is watermarked in the lower white space with the museum’s logo as a reminder of the artwork’s home collection.

As this program matures, the plan is to grow the initial offering of 21 images into a much larger virtual print gallery containing a significant percentage of the permanent collection.  The prints are offered on an “on-demand” basis, meaning that the print is only produced when an order is placed. This ensures that the customer gets a fresh print with every order.

In March, many members & friends nominated the Whaling Museum for inclusion on the Official List of 1,000 Great Places in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Their advocacy paid off. Today, the Governor’s Commission to Designate 1,000 Great Places of Massachusetts released its list, and the Whaling Museum is included! The Commission received some 12,000 nominations.

Press Release