The Melville Society Archive, housed at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, has acquired original Moby-Dick artworks every year since 2009. In 2016 the Archive acquired seven mixed-media prints by Robert Del Tredici, who created his first artworks in response to Moby-Dick in the mid-1960s. These seven new prints are among more than sixty Moby-Dick artworks that Del Tredici has created between 2013 and 2016. The passage from the novel that inspired each artwork is incorporated in the artwork itself.

After premiering at the 2017 Moby-Dick Marathon, seven new Archive acquisitions were exhibited alongside four new works of Moby-Dick art in the Elizabeth Schultz Collection at the Whaling Museum. Three of these were multi-media prints by Kathleen Piercefield: Queequeg in his own proper person, The Affidavit, and Women of New Bedford— Captain’s Wives. The fourth was another Queequeg, a sculpted bust by Monica Namyar.