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| Hours & Information |
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The Whaling Museum is open year round!
Nov 1 - Dec 21
Whaling Museum:
Open Thursday - Monday,
11 A.M.- 4 P.M.
The Whaling Museum will be closed from November 30 through December 3 to prepare for the 16th annual Festival of Trees!
NHA Historic Sites
Hadwen House, Oldest House, Old Mill, Old Gaol
Quaker Meeting House
Open During Research Library Hours
NHA Research Library
7 Fair Street
Open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Closed Wednesdays, weekends, and Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 26)
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| NHA Museum Shop |
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Open Thursday - Monday,
11 A.M. - 4 P.M.
NHA members receive a 10% discount on all non-sale items
Featured items:
Festival of Trees
Angel Ticket
Click here to buy now from our Web site |
| Three Holiday Workshops at the 1800 House
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Miniature Sailors Valentines
Holiday Theorem Painting
November 5
Gift Certificates available for 2010 classes |
We've decked the halls. . .
Host your holiday party in the Whaling Museum-in the Winter Wonderland of the Festival of Trees... |
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Celebrate amidst the festively decorated trees and Nantucket treasures placed throughout the Whaling Museum.
Many NHA properties are available for weddings, dinners, and parties. Celebrate life amid Nantucket treasures at the
Surround your guests with elegant art and important objects that bring the story of Nantucket's past to life at our world-class museum.
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| Show you care about Nantucket history: |
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| Gifts that Give |
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giftsthatgive.com is a Web site offering quality products for you to choose from, and 25% of your purchase will be donated back to the NHA on your behalf. Just select the NHA from the drop-down box at checkout.
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| The Compass Rose Collection to benefit the NHA |
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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, designed in 1936 by photographer H. Marshall Gardiner. The Compass Rose Collection was created to preserve and honor this significant piece of Nantucket history. Available at the Main Street store, signature t-shirts, hats, and caps are also available at the Main Street store, and 100% of sales is donated to the Nantucket Historical Association.
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| Monument to Women at Founders Burial Ground |
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In 1881 a monument was erected at the Founders Burial Ground containing the names and dates of ten early settlers of Nantucket, all men. Each of those men had a wife, and those women gave birth to a total of eighty children. At the rededication of the site in July 2009, there was a groundswell of support to erect a second monument of equal size and the same proportions listing the names and dates of the wives. The plan is to dedicate this monument before the end of 2009 as one more event marking the 350th anniversary of the arrival of English settlers on Nantucket in 1659.
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| NHA E-Newsletter |
November 2009 |
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| A Message from the Executive Director |
It is my great pleasure to inform our members that we have just completed the fund-raising for phase one of the $1.2 million campaign to restore our historic property Greater Light. Our last donor to the effort, upon learning that we needed another $5,633 to meet our goal, exclaimed, "Well, I will write a check for just that amount; in fact, I will round it off!" Many thanks to all who have contributed to phase one; this means we will be able to complete the major part of the first-phase restoration work by next summer (the NHA does not bang, saw, or bump things in the summer when many are trying to relax!).
With luck, this also means that we may be able to open the building to guests by July 2010 - so they can observe a work in progress, and see what great potential it holds - ultimately providing a setting for intimate gatherings, a kind of community parlor. Conservation of its furnishings and interpretation programming will be introduced in 2011.
Meanwhile, we are five sessions into our twenty-two free Food For Thought Brown Bag community lecture series; a few weeks ago, Walter Beinecke's daughters led a Gam about their father that attracted our largest Brown Bag attendance ever: 185!
 Please remember that the Winterthur exhibition, Harbor & Home, comes down on November 2. If you have not visited it yet, you are in for a treat.
Fair winds . . .
Bill Tramposch
Executive Director
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| Collections & Library News |
| Found: Love Letter at Greater Light
Verney Fellowship Available
In an effort to enhance the public's knowledge and understanding of the heritage of Nantucket, Massachusetts, the Nantucket Historical Association offers an annual fellowship, the E. Geoffrey and Elizabeth Thayer Verney Fellowship. Established in 1999, the award encourages research in the collections of the Nantucket Historical Association Research Library and is open to academics, graduate students, and independent scholars. Topics of research for recent scholars have included health aboard whaleships, women at sea, scrimshaw, samplers, local artists, Nantucket's architectural heritage, Quakerism, the African-American and Cape Verdean communities, the Quaise Asylum, and abolitionism. Click here for more information and details on how to apply. New Research Fellows
The NHA has named Betsy Tyler and Barbara White as Research Fellows, a category of scholars and historians who are "honored for their ongoing contributions to research, public lectures, and other mission-related activities. They will be ambassadors for the NHA in the public eye, and represent the best interests of the organization."
 Betsy Tyler graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina with a B.A. in English literature and earned a master's degree from UNC in Library Science. She has been librarian at both the NHA and the Atheneum, and in recent years has developed as a free-lance researcher and writer, becoming lead author for the Nantucket Preservation Trust's house-history program. Among her twenty-eight published volumes are A Walk Down Main Street: The Houses and Their Histories, for NPT, and the comprehensive Greater Light: A House History, for the NHA. She is currently writing about the Nantucket women portrayed in Susan Boardman's embroidered narratives for the 2010 NHA exhibition " Sometime think of me:" Notable Nantucket Women through the Centuries.  Barbara White, recently retired from a thirty-five-year career in the Nantucket school system, has a master's degree in African-American Studies from Boston University and a second master's degree in Educational Administration from the University of Lancaster in England. Boston University's Afro-American Studies Center published her master's thesis, The African School on Nantucket and the Integration of Nantucket Public Schools, 1825-47, which has been extensively revised, expanded, and re-issued by Skinner Publications as A Line in the Sand: The Battle to Integrate Nantucket Public Schools, 1825-1847. Her current research is on Cyrus Peirce, first principal of Nantucket High School and subsequent founder of the first normal school in America. Both Ms. Tyler and Ms. White are frequent patrons of the NHA's Research Library, and they attribute much of their successful research to its extraordinary collection of primary-source materials. | |
| 'Tis the season to be jolly: Festival of Wreaths and Festival of Trees |
Festival of Wreaths
 Mounted in the Foulger Gallery at the Whaling Museum, the Festival of Wreaths silent auction features more than eighty wreaths made by community members and artists and sponsored by businesses and nonprofit organizations.
Buy tickets for the Festival of Wreaths Preview Party from our Museum Shop Web site or by calling Stacey at 508.228.1894, ext.130.
- Festival of Wreaths Preview Party, Tuesday, November 24, 5 - 7 P.M.
- Thursday, November 26, Thanksgiving. The Whaling Museum is closed.
- Friday, November 27 & Saturday, November 28, 10 A.M. - 5 P.M.
- Sunday, November 29, 10 A.M. - 2 P.M. Bidding will close at 2 P.M. Successful bidders announced at 2:30. If not present, winners will be notified by phone.
Festival of Trees
 The ever-popular Festival of Trees, in its sixteenth year, fills the Whaling Museum with a brilliant display of holiday trees, also decorated by community members. The Festival of Trees will remain open weekends until January 4, 2010.
- Thursday, December 3, the 16th Annual Festival of Trees Preview Party will be held from 6 to 8 P.M. in the Whaling Museum. This party sells out very quickly each year, so if you haven't bought a ticket, you may want to do so today!
- Friday, December 4, Festival of Trees opens to the public, 11 A.M. - 8 P.M.
- Open Thursday - Monday, 11 A.M - 4 P.M. through December 21.
- The museum is closed December 22 - December 25.
- Reopens Saturday, December 26 - Monday, December 28, 1 - 4 P.M., and again on Saturday, January 2 - Monday, January 4, 1 - 4 P.M.
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| Food for Thought Lecture Series |
 November topics feature: "Nantucket Culture"
November 5 - Charles Gifford: "The Nantucket Landfill."
November 12 - Theatre Workshop of Nantucket: "Nantucket Theatre."
November 19 - Bill Tramposch, Mark Avery, Kim McCray: "Greater Light, What's Next?"
November 26 - The museum will be closed on Thanksgiving.
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| Exhibition: Harbor & Home: Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710-1850 |
Peter Foulger Gallery, Whaling Museum
Closing November 2
 This traveling exhibition explores the largely unstudied region of New England furniture - specifically the area between Boston and Providence, including the seafaring communities of the Cape and the islands. Of the more than seventy pieces of furniture -- along with paintings, portraits, maps, prints, and ship furniture -- many artifacts are on loan from the NHA collections.
Harbor & Home: Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710-1850 was organized by Winterthur Museum & Country Estate. Major support for Harbor & Home provided by: Americana Foundation, Chilton Foundation, Croll Foundation, Elizabeth B. McGraw Foundation, Wodecroft Foundation, Anonymous. The exhibition at the Nantucket Historical Association is made possible with support from Wilmington Trust FSB Massachusetts, Mr. and Mrs. Amos B. Hostetter Jr., Mr. & Mrs Hampton S. Lynch Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Jay M. Wilson, and Anonymous.
Free to NHA members, or with admission to the museum. |
| Exhibition: The Camera's Coast: Historic Images of Ship and Shore in New England |
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Through November 8
Hadwen & Barney Candle Factory
 This exhibition is a sampling of images from Historic New England's extensive collection of historic photographs documenting New England's rich maritime history, including Nantucket. The exhibition will be on display through November 8 and includes photographs of many traditional occupations -- fishing, shipbuilding, and deep-water voyaging. Subjects depicted include square-riggers, coasting schooners, fishing vessels and fishing ports, small boats and large yachts, summer hotels and fishermen's shacks, fishermen, seaweed gatherers, and saltmarsh haymakers.
 Curated by noted author and maritime historian William H. Bunting, The Camera's Coast illustrates life along the New England coast in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pioneering photographers represented in the exhibition include Nathaniel L. Stebbins, Henry G. Peabody, Baldwin Coolidge, and Emma L. Coleman.  Historic New England (originally the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities) is the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive regional heritage organization in the nation; the organization shares the region's history through vast collections, publications, public programs, museum properties, archives, and family stories that document more than 400 years of life in New England.
Free to NHA members, or with admission to the museum. |
| Exhibition: Views from the Tower, South Church 1809-2009 |
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.
Gallery is open during library hours.
Views from the Tower Digital Exhibition
See how our landscape has changed over the last 150 years. Views from the tower are available for viewing online: Visit the digital exhibition. |
Explorations Alaska!
Gold Rush Inside Passage Cruise |
May 27 - June 6, 2010
Explore one of the world's most spectacular destinations imaginable with Cruise West, a small family-owned, small-ship cruise line voted among the world's top lines by readers of Condé Nast Traveler, and consistent award winner for Best Small Ship and Expedition Cruising. The 138-guest Spirit of Yorktown, staffed by exploration leaders with many years of experience as naturalists and educators, will be your home for this exciting 11-day, 10-night adventure.
 Boarding in Seattle, the ship follows the route of the original stampeders of the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush, encountering along the way the culture and whaling heritage of the Northwest Native American tribes. From dense, forested shores to stunning fjords, immense glaciers, and unspoiled waterways, the inside passage is a world of spectacular beauty. Our small ship allows entry into waterways inaccessible to larger vessels. We will cruise the pristine waters of the San Juan Islands, visiting the Whale Museum at Friday Harbor, once an important whaling center and now a center for whale research. Continuing on to the Strait of Georgia, home to orcas, bald eagles, and seals; Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, a World Heritage Site; Frederick Sound, where humpback whales abound; and the Tracy Arm Fjord and Sawyer Glacier. We will also visit the beautiful town of Sitka with its Russian heritage; the Norwegian-heritage fishing village of Petersburg; and Skagway, where we revisit the Gold Rush of 1898. An optional excursion on the White Pass and Yukon Railroad will be available here.
Nina and Bob Hellman of Nantucket will be your hosts on this adventure, throughout which you will enjoy the services of the cruise line's accommodating staff and Exploration Leaders as well as Park Service Rangers and Native Cultural Interpreters. Believing that smaller is better, and making connections up-close and casual, Cruise West passengers are the recipients of friendly, personal attention. Each day offers the opportunity for a shore excursion at no additional cost. Bob Hellman will offer a special on-board lecture about the relationship between Alaska and the Far North and Nantucket and New England, during the era of American whaling.
Don't miss your chance to experience Alaska. Small-ship cruises book quickly, so save your place soon.
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| Annual Fund Appeal |
Please Consider Giving
 We have just sent a letter to our thousands of members with hopes that we can end the year in good shape. Please do not underestimate the effect that any gift has on our well-being. We are very thankful for your continued interest in the significant history of this special place and in our crucial role in preserving and interpreting it! | |
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