The Nantucket Historical Association’s
Year of the Nantucket Woman
Exhibitions:
A Passion for People: 40 Years of Portrait Photography by Beverly Hall
April 22 to December 31, Whitney Gallery, NHA Research Library, 7 Fair Street
A Passion for People will showcase photographer Beverly Hall’s outstanding eye for portraiture through four decades of Nantucket history. The retrospective will open a window into the remarkable changes that have occurred on Nantucket in the last four decades, and the evolution and resilience of the individuals and families who have lived through those times. To present the full scope of Hall’s work, the exhibition will feature several hundred images on multiple presentation screens in addition to traditionally framed images. Organized by categories, the screens will allow visitors to enjoy individual topics, such as “Characters,” presenting her remarkable images of Madaket Millie and Mr. Rogers, or “Artists,” highlighting the gallery scene on South Wharf in the 1970s and beyond. Hall’s work captures an important chapter in Nantucket’s postwar history, a time which it is increasingly important to record and showcase as part of Nantucket’s modern history. The exhibition will be accompanied by a Brown Bag lecture by Beverly Hall; and a series of gallery talks by the artist.
“Sometimes think of me”: Notable Nantucket Women through the Centuries
July 1 (Members Preview) to November 8, Peter Foulger Gallery, Whaling Museum
The major 2010 exhibition in the Peter Foulger Gallery of the Nantucket Whaling Museum will be “Sometimes think of me”: Notable Nantucket Women through the Centuries. The exhibition focuses on the colorful lives and histories of outstanding women from four centuries of Nantucket history. It will be the NHA’s first large-scale exhibition exploring the history of the island’s remarkable women. Such fascinating individuals as Wampanoag maiden Wonoma, whaling wife and journal keeper Eliza Brock, whaling wife and journal illustrator Susan Veeder, scientist Maria Mitchell, abolitionist Eunice Ross, and many contemporary Nantucket women, will be presented in lively detail using the NHA’s rich collections of artifacts, logbooks, and manuscript material. “Sometime think of me,” reminds us to recall and explore Nantucket’s less familiar, but no less remarkable lives—the lives of the island’s representative women.
“Sometimes think of me”: Notable Nantucket Women through the Centuries will feature thirty-two individuals whose lives are the subjects of “embroidered narratives” by Nantucket needlework artist Susan Boardman. In the great tradition of historic Nantucket schoolgirl samplers, as well as the legacy of whaling illustrations in logbooks and journals, Boardman’s embroidered narratives have grown to encompass a history-in-brief of the women of Nantucket from the earliest Native American period to contemporary times. Her work covers the lives of some of the most exemplary Nantucket women, whose spirit of independence, resourcefulness, and ambition, often in the face of their husbands’ long absences at sea, have made them much admired in American history. Astronomer Maria Mitchell said of her island sisters, “There is no town in New England where the whole body of women is so well-educated.”
A major feature of the exhibition will be an accompanying book-length catalog, written by island historian and NHA Research Fellow Betsy Tyler. The catalog will fill a major gap in the Nantucket literature as an accessible, thoroughly-researched history of a broad range of outstanding island women, past and present.
Other features of the exhibition and related programming will include voice-over readings of selected passages from the journals, logs, and letters of the women featured in the exhibition presented with still images on the Foulger projections screen; a lecture by Betsy Tyler presenting the history of the women in the show (summer); the Friends of the NHA lecturer Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab’s Wife.
Visions of Her: Portrait Photography by Nantucket Youth
May 28 to November 8, 2010, Hadwen & Barney Candle Factory, Whaling Museum
Visions of Her: Portrait Photography by Nantucket Youth features modern portraits of Nantucket women captured by teens from the Nantucket Boys & Girls Club and Nantucket High School. The photographs showcase the essence of women the young photographers admire, as well as the island itself. Bonus film interviews offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the creative spirit of the project.
The NHA offers this fresh, contemporary mix as part of its ”Year of the Nantucket Woman” offerings, which include the two seasonal exhibitions: A Passion for People: 40 Years of Portrait Photography by Beverly Hall (opens April 22) and “Sometimes think of me”: Notable Nantucket Women through the Centuries (opens July 2).
On-going within the Whaling Museum:
Extraordinary Women of Nantucket Gallery Tour
This gallery tour sheds light on the contributions of Nantucket women not only to
Nantucket’s society, but to the greater world as well. More specialized than the
Highlights of the Collection Tour, the Women’s History tour focuses on the lives of
Nantucket’s women.
The Nantucket Historical Association’s collection on display at the Whaling Museum
includes portraits, photographs, letters, journals, clothing, and souvenirs that contribute to
our understanding of the unique contributions of Nantucket women throughout history.
Nantucket Historical Association, 15 Broad Street, PO Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554
508-228-1894, Fax: 508-228-5618
