Presented in collaboration with the FABRIC Arts Festival and the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Portuguese and Lusophone-World Lecture Series, the evening offers three distinct experiences of food, film, and music.

Join special guest travel host Maria Lawton for an unforgettable exploration of São Miguel culture, cuisine, and breathtaking landscapes.

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.

The New Bedford Whaling Museum presented in partnership with The South Coast Literary Series is thrilled to welcome record-breaking American professional sailor and author Cole Brauer to celebrate the launch of her book “First Light: Sailing Solo But Not Alone,” a thrilling memoir from the first American woman to race a sailboat solo nonstop around the world.

Learn how both the notion of a Maine “fishing community” and the relationship the people of Maine have with the natural world has changed over time from author Janna M. Smith.

Celebrate National Authors’ Day at the New Bedford Whaling Museum with a special event honoring the writers and illustrators who bring maritime history and coastal culture to life. Browse a curated pop-up book sale from the Museum Store, meet select authors, and enjoy book signings with select authors.

Join the New Bedford Whaling Museum for a day trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA.

Celebrate hip hop at the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s First Friday! Curated with 3rd EyE Unlimited, the night features a live DJ, dance, spoken word, and art in the Harbor View Gallery. Join us for an evening of rhythm and local talent on the waterfront.

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 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. These book professionals will offer unique insight into their institutional collections and the state of this important and timely area of study. Accompanying the current exhibition Boundless: The Book as Art, we hope this program will spark curiosity and conversation about the history, materiality, and artistry of books.

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.

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.