Haul on the bowline

[sovay]

Because my brother and I couldn't make it to the vintage Ferraris, and our substitute car show was rained out, my family packed up this afternoon and went for a badly needed hit of art and culture at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. It was marvelous.

So far as I can determine, the museum was founded in 1799 by the East India Marine Society, an association of ships' masters and merchants who had collected foreign curiosities on their travels around the world and needed somewhere to house them. Hence, eventually, the East India Marine Hall, now one of the museum's galleries, wherein I found my favorite item in the entire museum—a pair of eighteenth-century knuckledusters. No, I'm serious. I loved the sections on maritime art, ships' portraits and models and scrimshaw, maps and sextants and sketches of sea serpents, but I'm looking at a metallic, four-ringed item in a cabinet full of recognizable nautical artifacts and thinking: Did they even have brass knuckles in the eighteenth century? To which the answer is, yes. And they belonged to the ship's captain. This is awesome for a number of reasons. But mostly because knuckledusters are the kind of random material culture that doesn't often make it into museums, even the kind that collect octants and whale teeth and cats-o'-nine-tails. The exhibit Painting Summer in New England wasn't bad, either.

Not inappropriately, this evening also brought Sirenia Digest #8. The illustration for "The Cryomancer's Daughter (Murder Ballad No. 3)" might itself be worth subscribing for. (And whoever thought to pair "The Depth Oracle" with Gustav Doré, thank you.) Come on. Each to each.

Comments

[sovay]

don't know whether the expansion means they have put more permanent collection on display, or whether they are relying more on temporary exhibits. The website isn't really informative.

I had the impression that more of their permanent collection has been put on display; they didn't have seem to have so many traveling exhibits, and we hadn't seen all the galleries by the time we left. But this is not an informed opinion.

the Museum of Our National Heritage or whatever it's called in Lexington

It is indeed the Museum of Our National Heritage. I drive past it most days, but I haven't been there since high school. (I was doing a project about folksongs of the Irish potato famine. They had an exhibit on the Irish potato famine. It didn't contain any folksongs, but I did run into my family name on a map; that made it worthwhile.)

Fruitlands

And I haven't been there since elementary school. Whoa. That brings back memories. I should probably go again, now that I know more about the Alcotts than Little Women.

Thanks!

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Now I will make plans for getting up to Peabody Museum next time I'm in town.

Museum of Our National Heritage is actually unaccountably good---with a name like that, I expected far less. They change their exhibits only a few times a year (3? 4?) so it is not hard to get to something that sounds interesting. (Also: it's air conditioned!)

You can do a kind of Alcott theme day, or couple of days, by hitting Concord and then Fruitlands. There is lots of good stuff in Concord besides the Alcotts' house, of course. The small Concord Museum (in downtown Concord) also gets unexpectedly good shows: a few years ago, they had the fascinating map exhibit.

Fruitlands is in an area that still has a lot of orchards. Get your family to go in about a month, and you can probably count on getting some peaches and Gravensteins.

One of the things I miss very much about New England is the large number of excellent and delightful small museums like these. And the orchards.