ONGOING PROJECTS

Exhibitions during 2002-2004 will concentrate on re-installation of newly-renovated galleries, comprising virtually all of the Museum’s permanent exhibitions (Dutch Arctic Whaling; British Paintings; American Whaling; African-Americans in the whaling trade; Native Alaskan, Northwest Coast, Polynesian, Azorian, and Cape Verdean ethnology; Japanese whaling; decorative glass; New Bedford arts and industries; scrimshaw; decorative arts; harpoons and gear; modern whaling). Temporary exhibitions include Treasures of the Kendall Collection (2002); William Bradford (2003). Projected: historic works by women artists; whale sculpture; recent acquisitions.

Photography and Photo Archives: Management of historic photographs, glass negatives, lantern slides, color transparencies, films, and other visual media–an extensive, grant-supported project to organize, catalogue, integrate, digitize, and improve the accessibility of the Museum’s enormous holdings. Also, photographing decorative arts, fine arts, and historical collections; various aspects of photo processing and photolab.

Scrimshaw: Ongoing scrutiny, connoisseurship, and physical examination of scrimshaw in the permanent collection and from outside sources–a pioneering cataloguing and documentation project to result in several publications, founded upon the world’s foremost collection and the world’s only Scrimshaw Forensics Laboratory; ultimately to result in a new permanent exhibition and a comprehensive catalogue.

Research and documentation opportunities include the Museum’s extensive holdings of fine arts and decorative arts, including collections management, condition surveying, exhibitions, and the preparation of occasional exhibit catalogues (including decorative wooden ship carvings and figureheads, British and American ceramics, European and American cast-metal objects, ship models, and associated material culture and iconography). Ongoing documentation and contextual studies of unique material-culture collections from the Northwest Coast, Alaska, Polynesian, and other Pacific Basin peoples; also some Precolumbian (Inca and Chumash) specimens.

Library: Ongoing consolidation of the former Old Dartmouth Historical Society and Kendall Whaling Museum libraries; cataloguing of books, rare books, pamphlets, government documents, series periodicals, etc. Extensive grant-supported digitization and access initiative. Acquisitions; facilities planning; cataloguing and cross-referencing of holdings in Dutch, French, German, Latin, Norwegian, Russian, Japanese, and other languages; topical shelf-lists and retrieval aids.

Manuscripts: Intensive cataloguing and cross-referencing of the museum’s collections of bound whaling logbooks, journals, and account books (±3000 volumes), unbound manuscripts and documents, and special collections.