May 14 - Oct 31
Whaling Museum: 

Open Daily,

10 A.M.- 5 P.M. 

 

Click here for full hours and ticket prices

May 12 to October 31:
Open Daily 10 A.M. - 5 P.M. 

Or shop our Web site 

Ralph Lauren has added an attractive new cream and navy canvas beach tote to its special collection of merchandise featuring the Compass Rose mural that adorns the east side of the Nantucket store. The Compass Rose Collection was created to preserve and honor this significant piece of Nantucket history. Signature tee-shirts, hats, and caps are also available at the Main Street store, and 100% of sales is donated to the Nantucket Historical Association. The tote is available on the Ralph Lauren Web site.

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 that will be on display at the Whaling Museum from May 31 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. 

 

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.

 

Buy the book from our museum shop.

 

For over three hundred years, the historic American village of Sag Harbor - the early whaling port at the tip of Long Island worthy of mention in Moby-Dick - has showcased buildings from the American Revolution to the present. The town includes a street lined with stately eighteenth- and nineteenth-century mansions that is known as "Captains Row," much like Nantucket's Upper Main Street. These similarities to Nantucket's whaling past, and that Sag Harbor as a resort community is now an alternative to the exclusive Hamptons, make this collection especially appropriate for exhibition here. 
 

The 2009 New England Museum Association Competition (for 2008 publications) received 209 publication submissions from 70 museums in 19 different categories; major art and historical museums throughout New England were among the competitors. The awards recognize excellence in design, production, and effective communication in all aspects of museum publishing. "The judges were extremely impressed with the high quality of design and effective communication with the NHA's submissions." More information is available at the NEMA Web site.

Whitney Gallery, 7 Fair Street

May 23-December 31

This exhibition celebrates the 200th anniversary of the South Church on Orange Street through artwork, posters, and historic photographs. The South Church Preservation Fund, Nantucket Preservation Trust, and the NHA are collaborating on this celebration of the church's anniversary.

According to the property deed from 1708, the Coffin family had a fenced garden located on the north side of the property. NHA staff member Kathrina Pearl and other NHA grounds crew have been enhancing the kitchen garden, adding new plantings and appropriate period seedlings. During the tour, guests will learn how the numerous herbs, flowers, vegetables, and various other plants currently growing in this replicated 1700s kitchen garden were used by Nantucket's early residents. In addition to the period kitchen garden, grounds staff maintains a small apple orchard, comprising a variety of apples appropriate to the period.

 

The Oldest House is currently open daily through June 26, Noon - 4 P.M.  On June 27, all NHA historic sites will be open daily, Noon - 5 P.M. until September 6. The garden tour is free for NHA members, $6 general public. 

See firsthand the large collection of artifacts preserved at the NHA's storage facility. NHA curators Ben Simons and Tony Dumitru will display some of the NHA's vast collection of textiles, glass, wood, metals, works on paper, paintings, baskets, and whale ivory and will talk about the collections. There are more than thirty thousand artifacts in the NHA's collection. 

 

The interpretive tour lasts one hour and meets at the Gosnold Center, 89 Bartlett Road, 11 A.M.- Noon. Tickets are $25 for NHA members, $35 for nonmembers.  For more information about the tour or to register, please call 508-228-1894, ext. 0.  Space is limited and tickets are not sold at the door.

Herman Melville spent almost three years in the South Pacific, serving on board three different whaleships until he deserted on the island of Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas. Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, of the Maritime Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport Museum, will explore the "sailor talk," "cannibal talk," and the "missionary talk" he encountered and how it shaped his first six books, including Moby-Dick.

 

Free for NHA members, $15 nonmembers.
Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street, 2 P.M.

Crew members will start arriving on island the middle of June and begin scouting locations, filming local scenes, interviewing, and piecing together the Gateway Orientation Film that will be premiered at the Whaling Museum in 2011.

Click here to read more about the project.

After years of planning, permitting, and reviewing architectural renderings, restoration work has begun on Greater Light. Purchased by Quaker sisters Gertrude and Hanna Monaghan in the 1920s, the house has been closed to the public for many years due to its poor condition. The NHA plans to restore and interpret the house in keeping with the theme of Nantucket as an art colony and resort. Discrete interior work will continue throughout the summer months; stabilization of the building and exterior work will begin in the fall. Read more about the project and find out how you can help.