The Martha’s Vineyard Museum is hosting a reception tonight, March 15, for its latest spotlight gallery. These are short-term galleries devoted to rarely seen collections, new acquisitions and curators’ favorites. The latest spotlight was curated by the museum’s Facebook fans and Twitter followers. Over the past few weeks, these friends have voted on their favorite objects in the museum collection. The winners are now on exhibit.
Martha’s Vineyard Museum has received a $293,900 grant to make detailed descriptions of its collections searchable online, museum officials announced this week. The grant is the largest in the museum’s 90 year history, and builds on preservation work that has been supported by Community Preservation grants from five Island towns.
Plein Air is in the air. For the month of October the Martha’s Vineyard Museum and Arts Martha’s Vineyard are teaming up to celebrate creativity done outdoors. During the month various museum properties will be open for Island artists for a series of plein air sessions.
The keepers of Vineyard history are leaving the heart of the whaling community for a new home up-Island.
The Martha's Vineyard Historical Society this week announced the signing of a purchase and sale agreement for the Littlefield family's Scarecrow Farm, 25 acres tucked between the Agricultural Hall and Polly Hill Arboretum in West Tisbury.
The decision to abandon much of their campus on School street and leave Edgartown did not come easily for a 10-member board of directors that spent the last year assessing the society's current performance and future needs.
Historical Society Moves Ahead with $25 Million Building Plan
By JAMES KINSELLA
The Martha's Vineyard Historical Society is pursuing an
ambitious plan to triple its exhibition and storage space in a project
that could cost about $25 million.
Society executive director Matthew Stackpole yesterday said that, if
all goes according to plan, construction of the society's new
museum could begin on its property in West Tisbury in 2009, with an
opening in June 2010.
The Martha’s Vineyard Museum has named Dr. Keith Gorman, the museum’s director of programs and archivist and librarian, to the new position of museum director.
With the creation of the new position, Mr. Gorman will be responsible for the museum’s operations, programs, staff, capital campaign, and the proposed museum move from Edgartown to West Tisbury.
The oral history exhibit African American and Civil Rights Voices in the Gangway Gallery at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum is continually adding new voices. The exhibit, which opened in March of 2007, features photographic portraits and excerpts from interviews conducted by oral historian Linsey Lee with members of the Vineyard’s African American community and individuals involved in the civil rights movement. Three new voices have been recently added. Currently 14 individuals and their stories are included in the exhibit and more will be added in the coming months.
Martha’s Vineyard Museum executive director Keith Gorman recently received good news from the National Endowment for the Humanities — the museum has been awarded its second National Endowment for the Humanities grant this year, this one in support of the development of the theme and content in the museum’s future permanent exhibit in its future museum facility.
The future setting of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum is the subject of a meeting tonight of its board of directors. The 26-member board will discuss whether to continue with an ambitious $27 million capital plan to relocate the museum to West Tisbury, or to move operations to the Edgartown school. Alternatively, the board could scrap both proposals and stay put at its original campus on the corner of School and Cooke streets in Edgartown.
In its sixth year of a capital campaign, the Martha’s Vineyard Museum is carrying an operating deficit from 2007 as it considers a different location for a future museum campus.
Keith Gorman, executive director of the museum since January of this year, has taken control of the nonprofit business at a difficult time. Determined to avoid a repeat financial performance in 2008, he is also presiding over a reassessment of the campaign to expand the museum which began in 2002 with a $27 million price tag and is currently undergoing a period of major reassessment.
