Past Exhibitions

Highlights of the Museum’s exceptional collection of fine and decorative arts, navigational instruments, ship models, artifacts, manuscripts, and maps from around the world.

Thanks to the generosity of Warner Bros. Pictures, this exhibition featured four costumes on loan from the film In the Heart of the Sea with additional artifacts included from the Museum collection.

From the mosques of the Middle East to the Roman Forum, see the world as 19th century New Bedford did: through the eyes of its artists.

Favorite pieces from the Museum's ceramics collection, representing various techniques and ranging from the fine and decorative arts.

Contemporary artists respond to the New Bedford Whaling Museum collection.

This exhibition explored Russell’s self-training and subsequent work targeting an audience with specialized knowledge of whaling. 

Highlights from the Elizabeth Schultz Collection, the Melville Society Archive, and the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Marine models viewed as a true decorative art form. Collections of the past, present and future.

Large scale paper cuts of various interpretations taken from the text of Moby-Dick.

Beautiful glass lighting, including the renowned Pairpoint “puffy” and reverse-painted table lamps, together with art glass made locally by the Mt. Washington Glass Company.

Images of New Bedford and Fairhaven from the permanent collection.

Maya textiles from the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology (Brown University) and the weaving collective Oxib’ B’atz (New Bedford).

A full size replica of a ship's Forecastle.

This exhibition highlighted the broad international and chronological compass of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

This was the second in a series of exhibitions following in the wake of  "Arctic Visions: Away then Floats the Ice-Island."

Abstract paintings using visual elements from Moby-Dick depicting the turbulent nature of the seas.

William Bradford as artist, innovator, adventurer, observer of history, culture and science.

Whaling history featuring Museum classics and the finest examples of scrimshaw anywhere.

Outdoor Sculptures, Contemporary Sculptors Respond to the Whaling Museum Collections

A selection of Rena Bass Forman's prints taken from her trip in 2006 to the West coast of Greenland.

Selected works from the Eliot Stetson Knowles Collection.

What do scallop shells, a girl on a swing, people working in a sail loft and in the Pairpoint glass factory have in common? They were each at one time or another, 'sitting' in New Bedford.