Thinking about the future of museums is a large, daunting task. Where will museums stand in culture, in communities, in education? Even now, we already see museum culture shifting in both purpose and attitude. Instead of placing emphasis and value solely on collections, museums have …
Content warning: this post includes discussion of vandalism against museums and markers honoring women, Black Americans, and Jewish individuals. On September 26th, 2021, a fire engulfed the back porch of the Susan B. Anthony Museum & House in Rochester, New York. The fire department was …
Still looking for plans for Halloween weekend? Local museums have you covered! Check out this list for a few spooky museum events in the Boston area.
The Peabody Essex Museum
When it comes to Halloween celebrations, no place does it better than Salem! The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem has a fantastic slate of exhibitions and events year-round, but now is an especially great time to check out their new exhibition The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming, which opened in September and runs through March. Get more information and purchase tickets here!
Ropes Mansion
Ropes Mansion, also in Salem, is an eighteenth-century historic home that is perhaps best known today for being featured in the beloved Halloween movie Hocus Pocus. On Friday, October 29, the Peabody Essex Museum is hosting a free screening of the film at the mansion. Learn more here!
The Daniels House
The Daniels House, another historic home in Salem which today operates as a bed and breakfast, is offering a “Local Lore by Candlelight” event every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evening this month. Participants will get to hear several tales from New England history by candlelight in the seventeenth-century house (which some say is haunted). Get tickets here!
Plimoth Patuxet Museums
On October 29 and 30, Plimoth Patuxet is hosting “A Historically Spooky Halloween.” With activities including seventeenth-century games, spooky stories, and more, this event will be fun for the whole family! Find more information and get your tickets here.
The Discovery Museum
The Discovery Museum in Acton has a few exciting events for kids and families planned for Halloween, including a Halloween Trail Walk and Scavenger Hunt on October 29 and a Halloween Hullabaloo on October 30 and 31. Both events are free with admission!
The Boston Children’s Museum
The Boston Children’s Museum is hosting several Halloween-themed events this month, including their Boo-Tanical Garden (running from October 20 to October 31) and a Halloween Spooktacular on October 29 from 6–9pm. For both events, timed tickets must be purchased online in advance. Read more here!
Granary Burying Ground
Granary Burying Ground on Boston’s Freedom Trail, which dates back to 1660 and is believed to be the final resting place for more than five thousand people, has long been thought to be haunted. If you visit this Halloween, you might just run into the ghosts of some of the cemetery’s famous residents, including Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock! Learn more about the site’s history here.
We hope this list gives museum-lovers some inspiration for how to spend the upcoming holiday weekend. However you decide to celebrate, have a safe and happy Halloween!
This past summer I worked for Ken Turino of Historic New England and Tufts University(Exhibition Planning and Historic House Museums). Having been in remote school for a year at this time, I was prepared to conduct my museum studies practicum remotely. While my internship certainly …
I spent the past week with family. On the last day of my youngest sister and my mom’s visit to Boston, we journeyed out to Concord to spend the afternoon at Orchard House — the home where Louisa May Alcott scribbled furiously away at a book …
Beginning in January, I and nine other students in Professor Christina Maranci’s seminar “The Threads of Survival: Armenian Liturgical Textiles” began our research into a rich group of Armenian liturgical textiles held at the Armenian Museum of America and the Museum of Fine Arts—and last Thursday, we finally had the chance to share the results of our hard work with the Tufts community! Our research last spring has culminated in an exhibition titled Connecting Threads / Survivor Objects, on view at the Tufts University Art Galleries through December 5. I know I don’t just speak for myself when I say that contributing to this project, from conception to completion, has been incredibly rewarding.
Armenian liturgical textiles encompass a huge variety of uses, materials, iconographies, and artistic techniques: objects featured in Connecting Threads / Survivor Objects include a nineteenth-century silk shurchar (priest’s robe) that originated in an Armenian settlement in Surabaya, Indonesia, an intricately embroidered saghavard (liturgical crown) from 1751, two massive painted and block-printed altar curtains, and much more. As the exhibition’s description explains, these objects are highly valuable in that they “show the multidimensional nature of liturgical textiles and bear witness to the vitality of Armenian communities during the Ottoman Empire and their influence along global commercial routes,” and also because they exemplify “the survival of a people, its identity, and faith” against all odds. Most of these objects had never received proper scholarly attention until this year, and their public exhibition sheds much-needed light on their impressive materiality as well as their deep cultural value.
In Professor Maranci’s seminar last spring, each student chose one of the textiles set for exhibition to examine in depth. In addition to writing a research paper on our chosen objects, we also helped to write the wall labels and educational materials for the exhibition. My object—a fragmentary embroidery of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ dating from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century and held today at the MFA—was likely originally displayed at the altar of an Armenian church, where it would have encouraged worshippers to reflect on both the tragedy of the Crucifixion as well as the hope of salvation and eternal life it represented.
As a current graduate fellow for the Tufts University Art Galleries, I also contributed to Connecting Threads / Survivor Objects throughout the summer by drafting an educational guide to go along with the exhibition. The educational guide highlights four themes of the exhibition—Life / Afterlife; Network / Movement; Communities / Individuals; and Materials / Techniques—and presents some key questions that the objects on display invite us to consider. Participating in the exhibition as both a student researcher and a gallery fellow helped me to translate my in-depth work on a specific object into educational content that will (hopefully) appeal to a wide variety of visitors, a skill I will definitely carry with me into future curatorial experiences. I’m also in the process of helping to plan a few tours of the exhibition—check out the Gallery’s list of upcoming programs for more details!
Connecting Threads / Survivor Objects represents the culmination of the hard work and collaboration of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, gallery staff, and more, and it has been so exciting to see the exhibition come to life. You can check out Connecting Threads / Survivor Objects in the Koppelman Gallery at the Tufts University Art Galleries from now through December 5—and if you’re not in the Boston area, you can also explore the exhibition through the Gallery’s mobile app!
