Mystic Seaport Museum: Galleries
I recently had an adventure in the Mystic / Lyme region of Connecticut and spent about a day and a half at Mystic Seaport Museum. This is the fourth post in a six-part miniseries about my visit. My last three posts covered Part 1 and Part 2 of “Seaport Village” along with the “Preservation Shipyard”. Today’s post features the “Galleries”, which hosted exhibits on ship figureheads, glass reproductions of sea creatures, art and diversity in maritime New England, the history of shipping, and a large model of Mystic. Upcoming posts will include “Boats, Signs, & Shows” and “Bonus Houses”.
Figureheads in the Wendell Building
During the Age of Sail, ship owners wanted their fleet to look fancy, so they employed shipcarvers to create figureheads. While Hollywood depicts these figureheads as scantily clad ladies, this was rarely the case. In the Figureheads exhibit, the carved humans were clothed in a range of cultural costumes with varying accuracy. While elegantly dressed saints or Roman-inspired soldiers were carved respectfully, depictions of Moorish and East Indian figures left something to be desired. Animals like lions and eagles were favorites for figureheads, while mythical creatures like the half-horse, half-fish hippocampus (now used as the name for a part of the brain due to its shape) were more rare.
Spineless: A Glass Menagerie of Blaschka Marine Invertebrates
During the mid 19th, father-and-son team Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka of Germany created their own mail-order catalogue business making and selling anatomically accurate glass models of ocean invertebrates. (I last saw their work when I visited the Corning Museum of Glass many years ago and likely saw the same pieces during my visit to the Harvard Museum of Natural History.) This exhibit included a selection of some of their best work, including little octopuses and sea anemones. Beside their work were scientific textbooks and the far less charming specimens in jars. While the topic was interesting, the exhibit was guilty of too much text and no audio description option.
Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty, and the Sea in the Stillman Building
In an effort to increase Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at Mystic Seaport, this exhibit highlighted the work of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) artists from across New England. The main attraction was a canoe made with a combination of West African and Native American techniques. A documentary beside the finished product detailed the process. However, the volume of the video was set low, and I had difficulty hearing parts of the discussion. I did appreciate the ability to sit inside the canoe. In a passageway between the two art installations was a narrow room displaying personal belongings of Indigenous children found in an attic space, as these children were forced to reject their birth culture and could only practice it in secret. These belongings were shown alongside a first edition Eliot Bible from 1663. This translation by English Puritan language expert John Eliot was the first time the Geneva Bible was written in an Algonquian language. Once on the other side, the room appeared to be a wetu or wigwam.
In the second room were additional modern art pieces using traditional craft techniques, including clothing and a wampum belt symbolizing constellations. My favorite piece in this room was “Wail on Whalers, a Portrait of Amos Haskins” (2024) by Felandus Thames. This historically accurate depiction of an African-American sailor was created using long lines of thread and pony beads, a work combining great creativity and planning skills. The subject of the artwork, Amos Haskin, was from what is now called Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head or Aquinnah. He was among the few Native Americans to become a ship captain, which he did around 1851 at age thirty-five. He led a twenty-two person crew for ten years before dying at sea in 1861. This piece and others in the gallery were all remarkable and unique from what I typically see in museums. Unfortunately, the space was so dimly lit that I struggled to see them, and much of the signage used academic jargon that I understood from having an MA in the field, but many visitors would find confusing or even alienating.
From Clippers to Containers: The Benjamin F. Packard and U.S. Deepwater Cargo Transport
Located on the second story of the Stillman Building above Entwined, its sibling From Clippers to Containers felt forgotten and unloved. The best feature of this exhibit was the entire captains quarters of a ship that had been removed from a boat slated for wreckage and put inside the museum. The floor-to-ceiling wooden fencing prevented me from getting a good view of the space. Thi space also contained a few model ships, a large steering wheel, and tons of signage with small text. Since I came to this exhibit near the end of my first day, I was starting to get museum fatigue. An audio tour in place of the signage would have been a welcome relief for my eyes.
Model of Mystic
Not to be missed was the scale model of Mystic during the height of the whaling industry. Tiny little buildings, people, and animals showed visitors what life was like during the mid-19th century in rural Connecticut. A soothing female voice described the scene. The lights above the model were supposed to change brightness as she spoke about different locations, but these lights did not always work correctly. I would have preferred the option to press a button about a specific location to trigger the light and audio, rather than waiting through a continuously running program to reach the section I wanted to learn more about, or discover that the section was not covered at all. The concept of the large model was fun and will be even more fun once the exhibit is updated.
The rating for this museum will appear at the end of the sixth post in the miniseries.