A giant screen experience, America the Beautiful celebrates the nation’s vast landscapes and the conservation legacy begun by Theodore Roosevelt that keeps America’s wild heart beating.

Join us for a special AHA! Night at the New Bedford Whaling Museum as we feature our local consigners, just in time for holiday giving!

Join the Moby-Dick Book Club, a virtual three-part series exploring Herman Melville’s iconic American novel. Whether you’re reading it for the first time or returning to it with fresh eyes, all are welcome to take part in engaging, thought-provoking conversations led by some of the world’s leading Melville scholars.

Explore the art of bookmaking through an engaging artist roundtable on storytelling, creativity, craftsmanship, and the ways contemporary artists push the boundaries of what a book can be.

Join author Jen Rose Smith to think about ice—glaciers, snow, snowflakes—in material ways, scientific ways, cultural ways, and to approach ice through a critical lens that puts the politics of race and indigeneity and the violence of dispossession and racialization at the center.

May Babcock is an eco-centric artist that creates paper works and sculptural forms from natural materials she sources from local environments. Join us in conversation as she shares her process in creating works for her New Ecologies series, a collection of sculptural paper forms constructed from sites around New England.

Close out the 2026 First Fridays series with the ocean-inspired sounds of The Whale Guitar and Sharks Come Cruisin’. Enjoy energetic sea shanties, a cash bar, and light bites in the Harbor View Gallery. Don’t miss this celebration of maritime community!

Local History Guild is the NBWM’s quarterly Zoom program, an informal discussion about art, history, science and culture related to the museum’s mission, collection, and the surrounding region. In this edition of the program, we will be joined by experts on the book as art from the perspectives of contemporary art, special collections, and the archive.

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition New Ecologies: May Babcock (on view November 20, 2026–April 18, 2027), this special evening program brings together film, contemporary dance, and conversation to explore how artists respond to changing landscapes and emerging ecological systems.

Journey through uncharted literary waters and explore Melville’s epic in bold new light with writer and literary historian Steve Mentz.

IN THE WHALE is an award-winning feature-length film about arguably the greatest fish story ever told, though this one is true. It’s the account of a man who survived to tell the tale of being swallowed by a whale, and what happened after he was spit out.

Dance, laugh, sing, and get silly as we celebrate the final night of 2026! Gather the kids—and kids at heart—and kick off your New Year’s Eve celebration at the New Bedford Whaling Museum with the always entertaining Toe Jam Puppet Band!

Celebrate New Year’s Eve at the New Bedford Whaling Museum with Jesús Andujar y Su Grupo Sazón for an unforgettable evening of live Latin Jazz, dancing, and fireworks overlooking New Bedford Harbor.

Each January, the New Bedford Whaling Museum hosts a celebrated live reading of Moby-Dick. The annual Marathon draws global enthusiasts—both in-person and online—to share in this remarkable literary tradition.

Join special guest travel host Maria Lawton for an unforgettable exploration of the North of Portugal, cuisine and breathtaking landscapes.