NEWPORT NEWS, VA. -- Like treasured mementos bound in a family's prized keepsake, The Mariners' Museum's latest exhibition, "A Maritime Album," breathes life into history, providing a rare, revealing photographic testament to man's abiding devotion to the sea.

While the museum has become renowned through the year for its sizable holdings of maritime objects and archives, the exhibition sheds light on a lesser discussed segment of its collection, its bounty of photographs.

The exhibition, which continues through May 31, is slated to travel around the country through the year 2000.

It showcases images of the fishing, sailing, and whaling traditions off international shores; naval encounters and shipbuilding ventures; compelling, intimate views that span the invention of photography and the advent of the steamship more than a century ago to the recent years.

Guest curator and photographic historian John Szarkowski culled the museum's archives of more than 600,000 images, considered one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind in the country, to settle on 100 of its best. Szarkowski, who the New Yorker magazine named "the most influential figure in the field of modern photography," took up residence at the museum in early 1996 to make his selections.

"It's such an interesting subject," he remarked, "and a wonderful collection put together by scholars, curators, and amateurs who were interested in this subject from a hundred points of view."

Mariners' Museum President and CEO John B. Hightower said Szarkowski infused the project with a seasoned, ingenious insight. "His ability to bring you into a story that a photograph tells and his remarkably practiced eye are really fabulously illuminating," he observes.

Describing Szarkowski as a "pivotal force" in photography in the United States, Thomas Moore, the museum's curator of photography, added, "He was one of the few historians who really took a critical look at photography in the sixties and brought it to the public's attention as away of documenting the world around us and as a tool for an artist."

Szarkowski says his methods for uncovering the best the collection has to share was simple. "When you look at a collection for the first time, you want pictures that sell you something that you didn't know before, and you want them to tell you that in a colorful and an economical way," he explains. "I selected the pictures on the basis of how much they piqued my curiosity on the issue."

The selections, which will fill two galleries of the museum, Moore notes, "span the history of photography tracing technical and aesthetic developments along the way. The photographs reflect a powerful testimony to which the sea has permeated every aspect of national life."

The museum collection includes more than 279,000 photographic prints and 350,000 negatives and ranges from cyanotypes and daguerreotypes to albumen prints, stereographs, gelatin-silver prints, and postcards, all of which provide a diverse view of change in American maritime culture, economy, and industry. An increasingly popular resource for scholarly research, publications, video and film production, and exhibitions, the collection also documents the history of technology and science, naval seapower, Native American studies, Civil War naval vessels, and decorative arts.

Sponsored in part by Paine Webber Group, Inc, and Newport News Shipbuilding, the exhibition is accompanied by A Maritime Album: 100 Photographs and Their Stories, co-published by The Mariners' Museum and Yale University Press. The catalogue includes an introduction by Szarkowski and essays written by Richard Benson, dean of Yale University' School of Art. Its design is adapted from Szarksowski's seminal publication, Looking at Photographs.

The Mariners' Museum, one of the largest and most comprehensive maritime museums in the world, houses a treasure trove of more than 35,000 items inspired by mankind's experiences with the sea.

For 67 years, it has illustrated the spirit of seafaring adventure, assembling a renowned and strikingly diverse collection of maritime artifacts: figureheads, scrimshaw, hand-crafted ship models, decorative arts, prints, paintings, and small craft from around the world.

The museum's permanent galleries hold treasures including the anchor from the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, Captain John Smith's map of the Chesapeake Bay, and the polar bear figurehead from the vessel that Admiral Richard Byrd sailed on for his antarctic expedition in the 1930s. Through the interpretation of the museum's collection, which reflects man's use of the sea for transportation, food, battle, and pleasure, visitors can discover centuries of maritime history.

The first-order lighthouse lens from the Cape Charles lighthouse welcomes visitors to the Mariners' Chesapeake Bay Gallery. Thematic exhibit areas interpret the bay's early history, watermen, shipbuilding and military complexes, navigation, commerce, and recreation. Historical photographs, a working steam engine, fiber-optic maps, videos, and hands-on activities complement the hundreds of maritime artifacts on display.

The Mariners' Age of Exploration Gallery chronicles the developments in shipbuilding, ocean navigation, and cartography that made the voyages of the Fifth through Eighteenth Centuries possible. Ship models, rare books, illustrations, maps, navigational instruments, and other artifacts comprise the exhibit. A hands-on Discovery Library allows visitors to examine reproductions of early navigational instruments and books.

The jewel of the Mariners' Museum's collection is the Crabtree Collection of Miniature Ships, one of its most popular exhibits. From a primitive raft to a Venetian galleass decorated with 359 carved figures, these exquisitely detailed miniature ships depict the evolution of boat building in an unparalleled display of craftsmanship by artist-carver August F. Crabtree.

Other galleries include the William Francis Gibbs: Naval Architect Gallery, which highlights the life and career of the designer of the record-setting SS United States, World War II Liberty ships, and more than 6,000 naval and commercial vessels; Small Craft Collection of more than 55 vessels from five continents, including a gondola from Italy, canoes from Africa, and sampans from China and Burma; and the Great Hall of Steam, which includes the anchor and other artifacts recovered from the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor.

Complementing the museum's galleries is the film Mariner, which highlights maritime activity the world over. Historical interpreters, including a model ship builder, an Eighteenth Century sea captain, and a Nineteenth Century whaler, appear regularly in the galleries, demonstrating nautical skills.

The museum's research library and archives, which are open to the public, house more than 75,000 volumes, 600,000 historic photographs and negatives, and one million archival items - including the archives of Chris-Craft Industries.

The museum shop offers maritime books, prints, jewelry, and gifts. Visitors also can explore the 550-acre Mariners' Museum Park, which features the Noland Trail, a five-mile walking trail with scenic sites overlooking Lake Maury.

A newly formed alliance between The Mariners' Museum and the South Street Seaport Museum of New York City allows the two institutions to share collections, exhibitions, educational programs, publications, and other endeavors while retaining their individual control and autonomy. The partnership will allow The Mariners' Museum to reach a larger audience by displaying its exhibitions and collections in the Seaport Museum's high-profile, high-visitation location in lower Manhattan.

The museum, at 100 Museum Drive, between Colonial Williamsburg and Hampton/Norfolk/Virginia Beach, is open from 10 am until 5 pm daily. Telephone, 757/596-2222 or 800/581-7245.