Italian carved sofa with needlepoint upholstery depicting scenes of summer on Nantucket, designed by the Monaghan sisters and stitched by their mother in about 1930.
NANTUCKET – The Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) presents “Out of the Box: Unpacking Nantucket Stories,” a new major exhibition exploring the stories of Nantucket’s people over four centuries with more than 80 artifacts from the NHA’s collections that have rarely, if ever, been displayed before.
The exhibition is on view through October 30 in the McCausland Gallery at the Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street.
Arline Bishop’s wedding dress, originally worn in 1928 and later worn by four other women in her family.
Visitors will learn about life at home on Nantucket and at sea, see the island at work and at play and encounter rare maps, provocative portraits and tokens of love. This exhibition features an interactive photo booth, in which guests can become part of Nantucket history by inserting themselves into historic images from the NHA’s photo archives.
“The association has been collecting Nantucket history for 123 years, so we naturally have more artifacts in our care than we can display at any one time,” says Michael R. Harrison, the association’s Robyn and John Davis chief curator. “We are excited to bring out of storage many fascinating items with great local stories that may not have been seen by the public in a long time. In the case of some of our historic clothing items, we are displaying them for the very first time. We hope Nantucketers and visitors alike are as captivated by them as we are.”
Key maps from the association’s collection are on display as well, including a copy of John Tupper’s map from 1781 (in which Nantucket Harbor looks like the silhouette of a whale) and Clarence and Anne Lundquist’s 1969 hooked rug map of the island.
The exhibition also features an “object theater,” where video, sound and lighting highlight key objects in the exhibition. Objects include Gertrude and Hanna Monaghan’s needlepoint sofa decorated with scenes from their life on Nantucket in the 1930s, Susan Veeder’s 1848 whaling journal, with unique watercolors of the Pacific islands, and a 1928 wedding dress worn by five brides across four generations of a single family.
For additional information, www.nha.org or 508-228-1894.
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