In 1903, Berkshire Museum founder Zenas Crane, inspired by such institutions as the American Museum for Natural Science, the Smithsonian, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, decided to blend the best attributes of these establishments in a new museum for the people of Western Massachusetts. Thanks in large part to Crane’s efforts, the broad and […]
Norman Rockwell Museum
Norman Rockwell Museum Stockbridge, MA Norman Rockwell was probably most famous for his Saturday Evening Post covers Which depict small town life in America. Often humorous, sometimes political, and always honest. In 1916, the 22-year-old Rockwell painted his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post, the magazine considered by Rockwell to be the “greatest show […]
Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum
Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum Lenox, MA Ventfort Hall, built by George and Sarah Morgan as their summer home, is an imposing Jacobean Revival mansion that typifies the Gilded Age in Lenox. Sarah, the sister of J. Pierpont Morgan, purchased the property in 1891, and hired Rotch & Tilden, prominent Boston architects, to […]
Chesterwood
Daniel Chester French (April 20, 1850 – October 7, 1931) was an American sculptor. His best-known work is the sculpture of a seated Abraham Lincoln (1920) in Washington, D.C. After a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, French worked on his father’s farm. You can see that to him, family was very important when […]
Mystic Seaport Museum
“Climb aboard another era” in this 19th century seaport village. Mystic Seaport village has the usual findings: blacksmith, cooperage, church, drug store, typical New England homes, bank, general store, school house, & printing office. But there are some things that set it apart for me such as the Thomas Oyster House and the Henry B. duPont Preservation […]
Titanic – 12,450 Feet Below
Laurel Thorndike Rich Roth mentioned.It’s a chilly night upon the frigid North Atlantic. Though stars glitter above, gloom presses in and an ominous presence lurks just out of sight… Sea Research Foundation’s Dr. Robert Ballard, renowned oceanographer and explorer, and Tim Delaney, former Walt Disney Imagineer, bring the Titanic’s timeless history to life. At Titanic […]
Victoria Museum – The Morse-Libby Mansion
The Morse-Libby Mansion in Portland Maine is a great place if you’re a fan of Victoriana. The house is quite intact to this day nearly 150 years after it was built having been owned by only two families before becoming a museum. For those who are into architecture and interior design, this house is the […]
World Children’s Museum
Sharon A. Roth mentioned. What a fun place! And, I visited without a child in tow! The mission of World Children’s Museum in Glens Falls, NY is: to inspire curiosity and foster understanding and appreciation of worldwide cultural diversity. I think it likely they do that well. We were actually walking by this museum on […]
Museum of Modern Art
I have to admit when I heard we were going to the MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, inside I cringed. My inner art snob thought “I’m not going to like this.” Much like a stubborn child who turns his nose up at green vegetables. Visions of metal sculptures made of “junk” and paint splattered canvases […]
National Museum of the American Indian
On a recent trip for business and leisure, we visited the National Museum of the American Indian. The building is absolutely exquisite. The construction of the building has much meaning, and the small grounds around it are planted in various native species as well as traditional foods the rest of us associate with North America’s […]
