“Look pleasant, please,” George F. Parlow (1826-1890) reportedly said to sitters when they faced the camera in his studio. “Look pleasant, please”: Early Portrait Photography in New Bedford highlights the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s collection of portrait photographs made between the time of photography’s invention in 1839 and the start of a new century in the 1900s.

In 2025, communities across the world will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Cape Verdean independence from Portugal. New Bedford and the greater South Coast area of New England are home to one of the largest and longest-standing Cape Verdean communities outside of Cabo Verde. In marking this occasion, the New Bedford Whaling Museum presents the Contemporary Cape Verdean 2025 project, which explores the Cape Verdean American and Cape Verdean experience through the lens of contemporary art and community storytelling.

In Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance, a new installation work created by Heidi Whitman for the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Whitman seeks to capture the obsessiveness of Ahab and the ominous feeling of dread and inevitable violence that pervades the novel.