Connecticut

On July 2 the Barnum Museum commemorated P.T. Barnum's 204th Birthday at his Museum for the first time in four years. The United States Postal Service Vintage Circus Posters Stamps will be dedicated in honor of Phineas Taylor (P.T.) Barnum, who was born on July 5, 1810 in Bethel CT and died April 7, 1891 in Bridgeport CT. Barnum was a one-term mayor of Bridgeport and four-term member of the Connecticut General Assembly.
Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University’s new acquisitions include: William Oliver’s The Irish Piper (1874), Alexander Williams’ Cottage, Achill Island, William Magrath’s The Farewell and At the Cottage Door (1875), Alfred Downing Fripp’s Galway Woman and Child, Laurence Campbell’s Bust of Jack B. Yeats (1944), and most notably Jack B. Yeats’ Derrynane (1927). The museum was also recently recognized for innovative design and architecture of its space by the Connecticut Building Congress Project Team. The museum earned a first-place award in the small projects category. The museum is home to the world’s largest collection of painting, sculptures, and other visual media related to the famine that took place in Ireland from 1845 to 1852.
In May, the Lockwood Mathews Mansion Museum received a major grant of $20,000 from the Xerox Foundation in support of its educational and cultural programs. And in February, the museum received two donations totaling $10,000 - Spinnaker Real Estate Partners LLC donated $5,000 and an anonymous donor made a matching gift in the same amount.
Mystic Arts Center (MAC) is pleased to announce plans to open 15 Water Street Gallery later this year at the new Mystic Arts Center building known as the Emporium. Mystic Arts Center, which just celebrated its Centennial year, purchased the building adjacent to its riverside property in 2013 to establish a street-level presence and preserve an important historic treasure. MAC was able to purchase the building with generous help and contributions from the sellers and Chelsea Groton Bank. To support the tremendous amount of renovation needed, MAC has obtained $200,000 in donations and is working to raise an additional $300,000. MAC’s goal is to complete the renovation of the historic landmark this year.
Connecticut's Old State House is proud to announce that it has entered into a partnership with the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art to provide admission discounts to those who visit both venues in the same day. This new agreement will allow visitors to enjoy two iconic Hartford landmarks, separated by just a few steps, for extremely affordable prices.

Maine

During the 2014 summer season, visitors to Maine Maritime Museum will have new opportunities to explore and experience the state’s renowned shipbuilding heritage through new tours offered in Bath. The museum has developed two new trolley tours, “The Bath Iron Works Story” and the “Historic Bath Architecture: The City that Ships Built” in response to the BIW decision to suspend the museum’s popular shipyard drive-thru tours because of safety and security concerns during a period of heightened shipyard construction and shipbuilding activity. The most critical part of the previous “Behind the Scenes Tour,” has been retained, according to the museum’s Director of Public Programs Jason Morin. The second new tour, developed with the assistance of Sagadahoc Preservation, Inc., focuses on the impact that shipbuilding had on the architecture and life of the city.
The Saco Museum and Leslie Rounds are the recipients of an Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH)’s Leadership in History Awards for the exhibit "I My Needle Ply with Skill": Maine Schoolgirl Needlework of the Federal Era. The AASLH Leadership in History Awards, now in its 69th year, is the most prestigious recognition for achievement in the preservation and interpretation of state and local history. For the exhibition the Saco Museum assembled 120 embroidered samplers from across the country, creating the first-ever exhibit of such a large collection of needlework pieces made by Maine girls and young women of the 18th and 19th centuries. The exhibition included a full-color book with photographs of all the samplers and information about the makers and their teachers.
The Museums of Old York is selling the Harry S. Winebaum Collections Center in York Beach and is looking for a larger building in which to store its collection, according to Executive Director Joel Lefever. The commercially-zoned, 2,000 square foot Winebaum Center, 33 Railroad Avenue, is listed for sale by The Kane Company in Portsmouth for $499,000, he said. In 1990, the Museums of Old York, then the Old York Historical Society, took possession of the building under a lease/gift arrangement with the owner, Sumner J. Winebaum, Harry Winebaum’s son.
Maine Historical Society and Portland Public Library have formed a partnership and together they are developing a 35,500 square foot shared collection management center on Riverside Street in Portland. The collections center will allow both organizations to expand programs on Congress Street, and to meet the needs of children, neighbors, extended communities, and visitors to Maine from around the world. The center will be the place both organizations manage, process, care for, prepare, preserve, and transfer their collections, and will support all of their programmatic activities.
The Bowdoin College Museum of Art received a gift of more than three hundred works from the contemporary art collection of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel. Comprising works by nearly seventy artists — including Robert Barry, Lucio Pozzi, Edda Renouf, Julian Schnabel, James Siena, Pat Steir, and Richard Tuttle, as well as paintings by the Vogels themselves — the gift will enable the museum to represent the evolving history of minimal, post-minimal, and conceptual art practice from the mid-twentieth to the early twenty-first century. Works on paper represent the majority of the gift, which also includes photography by Richard Long, ceramics by Michael Lucero, and sculpture by Merrill Wagner.

Massachusetts

The North Andover Historical Society received a grant from the Rogers Family Foundation for $1200 to help support our educational programs. A portion of this funding will be used to develop pre-school programs starting in the fall.
Historic Deerfield was the featured loan exhibition at the Philadelphia Antiques Show in April. More than 2,000 people toured the exhibition, titled "Historic Deerfield: Art and Life in an Extraordinary New England Village." The museum received a federal general conservation grant from IMLS for $71,722 and is currently in the process of a general conservation survey of the museum. The museum recently received a grant of $30,000 from the Massachusetts Cultural Council's Cultural Facilities Fund for the restoration of the c. 1795 Barnard Tavern. The museum acquired the c. 1800 Stebbins family tall clock at Sotheby's in January, made possible by the generous gifts of 60 donors who pledged $268,000 over a span of ten days. The clock was first owned by Deerfield resident Asa Stebbins (1767-1844) and was probably among the original furnishings of his new house built in Deerfield in 1799. The clock is now on view in its original home, the Stebbins House.
Boston Children’s Museum recently announced that the Highland Street Foundation has committed $25,000 in support of its Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) Card Discount for one year. In 2012, Boston Children’s Museum introduced a program that invites all Massachusetts residents with Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards to show their card to get a discounted $2 per person cash admission. The Museum does not process EBT transactions; cash or other payment must be provided for admission. Boston Children’s Museum was the first cultural institution in Massachusetts to introduce this program. Many other cultural institutions have introduced their own EBT admission program, making cultural institutions across New England more accessible than ever to families who formerly may not have attended due to cost. Research proves that low-income families are using the Museum’s EBT Admission Program in increasing numbers: in FY13 the Museum hosted just over 3,000 EBT visits and in FY14 the projected hosting may exceed 5,000 EBT visits.
Boston Children’s Museum has launched a new website designed to complement and expand access to the Museum’s authentic century old Japanese House, the Kyo no Machiya, exhibit which was donated by the city of Kyoto, Japan to the city of Boston in 1979. Formerly a merchant’s home in the silk-weaving district of Kyoto, the Japanese house was brought to the United States from Kyoto and rebuilt piece by piece in Boston Children’s Museum. The new web site, www.BostonChildrensMuseum.org/JapaneseHouse, has been designed to engage students of all levels, families and others interested in Japanese history, art, architecture and culture. Generous funding from the Center for Global Partnership, the National Endowment for the Arts and the US-Japan Foundation made it possible for Boston Children’s Museum to provide world-wide access to this unique treasure, its history, its origin in Japan, and to multimedia curriculum resources for learning and teaching about Japan.
USA Today recently launched a contest calling on travelers to help them pick between the 20 quirkiest landmarks across the country, and pare down the list to one location that they think is a must-see for anyone visiting a particular city. Boston Children’s Museum’s Hood Milk Bottle was listed among the 20!

The Lynn Museum & Historical Society reports that its seven week showing of the Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition “The Way We Worked” was a resounding success. The Lynn Museum & Historical Society was one of two Massachusetts museums to host the exhibition as part of the Museum on Main Street project—a national/state/local partnership to bring exhibitions and programs to cultural organizations.

In July, Westport Historical Society opened a “new” historic house, the Handy House, located at 202 Hix Bridge Road, Westport MA. A 2-year project to stabilize the building and to meet fire, life safety and other codes has been completed. Far from being an overly- restored historic house frozen in time, the Handy House will provide the visitor with an experience of discovery. The general public will experience ever-changing “windows” into the town’s past. The Handy House has been left mostly unfurnished so that visitors can view the walls, floors, windows, doors, hinges, moldings, plaster, and other parts of its structure. Visitors will encounter some challenging and unexpected stories of the earliest settlers in Westport and their struggle for religious freedom as Quakers and Baptists, including stories of matricide, slavery, opium and bankruptcy. More details about the project are available at www.wpthistory.org
The Spellman Museum of Stamps & Postal History at Regis College in Weston recently received a $5000 grant entitled "Learning about Peace and Justice through Postage Stamps" from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Boston. The grant will make available in the 2014-2015 school year both classroom visits and field trips to the Museum by students in grades three to six from Boston area parochial schools under the aegis of the Sisters of St. Joseph. There will be no charge to the schools involved.
The Provincetown Art Association and Museum is celebrating its 100th anniversary: PAAM100: A Century of Inspiration. One of the goals of the centennial year is to acquire 100 significant gifts of art to the permanent collection. To date, PAAM has been gifted works by Edward Hopper, Robert Motherwell, Blanche Lazzell, Myron Stout, Milton Avery, Hans Hofmann, Marsden Hartley, Nan Goldin, Richard Baker, Lester Johnson and many others.

The Buttonwoods Museum is celebrating the 200^th anniversary of their Duncan House this year. The recently unveiled a new branding logo and tagline.
The University Museum of Contemporary Art (UMCA) at UMass Amherst has been gifted six original never-before-exhibited prints by Andy Warhol. These major works, by one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, are gifts from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. All in Warhol’s recognizable style, they depict a range of subjects, from fashionable portraits to popular culture, and will be exhibited in a future exhibition at the UMCA. In addition, a donation of 48 contemporary American prints, spanning the creative spectrum of art making today, was given to the UMCA collection by Richard Gerrig in memory of his sister Risa Gerrig, a UMass alumna (1981). These prints represent all manner of special processes and innovative techniques in printing-making.
The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art has launched a newly designed website that showcases its rich variety of programs—from exhibitions to workshops to book signings with major artists. The site, carlemuseum.org, includes many illustrations from the Museum’s permanent collection. “Our new website really reflects our beautiful museum. Now visitors worldwide who want to visit, or just learn more about us, can learn more about our offerings while enjoying artwork from some of the leading illustrators of our time—William Steig, Leo Lionni, Jerry Pinkney, and more,” says Alexandra Kennedy, executive director.
Helped by a gift from philanthropist David M. Rubenstein, the Kennedy Library and Museum will expand exhibit space that chronicles Kennedy’s life and legacy with dramatic, new visual offerings and will give visitors more interactive access to documents, speeches, and other papers from his administration. An array of large screens, some of them wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, will bring his words and image to the 200,000 people who visit the museum each year. The $2.5 million project is expected to be completed by spring 2015.
On June 16, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) presented its "President’s Award" to Museum of Science, Boston president and director Ioannis Miaoulis and the Museum's National Center for Technological Literacy® (NCTL®). The first time a museum has been so honored, this award recognizes entities that encourage K-12 students to pursue engineering careers and/or influence public opinion and create recognition of the critical role that engineering plays in today's technology-driven society.
In May, the New Bedford Whaling Museum broke ground for the construction of its new Education Center and Research Library. The culmination of years of planning and fundraising, the new building will allow the Museum to consolidate its staff, collections, research, and educational programs on Johnny Cake Hill. This new center is expected to bring great and lasting benefits both to the Museum’s membership and the region it serves.
Worcester's EcoTarium has been named a 2014 Promising Practice Award Reimagined recipient by the MetLife Foundation and Association of Children's Museums (ACM). The award supports the museum's innovative approach in adapting Countdown to Kindergarten (CTK), a one-day celebration for incoming kindergarten students in Worcester Public Schools, to better accommodate families who experience physical or mental disabilities, and learning or social difficulties. The award and accompanying $5,000 grant is a part of the 2014 MetLife Foundation and Association of Children's Museums Promising Practice Award Reimagined program, which identifies forward-thinking practices at children's museums.
Visitors of all ages to the EcoTarium will be able to discover connections between urban environments and their many occupants, including people, plants and animals, thanks in part to a $25,000 donation from National Grid. The gift supports the museum's future City Science exhibit, an interactive exploration of cities that uses Worcester as its backdrop. City Science will uncover the hidden science of cities from many different perspectives: above, below and at street level. With hands-on experiment stations, visitors will be able to discover and investigate the science they encounter in their everyday lives.
The Art of Science Learning, a National Science Foundation-funded project hosted by the EcoTarium, began a year-long innovation incubator on March 1. Over 100 participants, or "fellows," from the fields of education, the sciences, business, and the arts will gather at the museum for a full-day of workshops to kick off the 47-week Worcester Incubator for Innovation. Over the course of the project, fellows will use a state-of-the-art curriculum to explore how the arts can be combined with science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) to find viable market solutions for today's challenges. Led by national, regional, and local artists and entrepreneurial experts, the incubator fellows will apply the curriculum to create transportation solutions for enhancing Worcester's economic activity, connecting its communities, and improving the quality of life for its residents and visitors.
Kidspace Inc. is a not-for-profit organization that supports an innovative collaborative venture, still in its formative stage. It brings together the Clark Art Institute, Williams College Museum of Art, and MASS MoCA to jointly conceive a set of innovative K-12 education programs, and to thereby broaden and deepen their collective reach and impact. Kidspace Inc is organized to provide coordination, support, evaluation, research, and teacher training services.

Norman Rockwell Museum acquired the art and archives from the Famous Artists School in Westport, Connecticut, nearly doubling the Museum’s collections. This major gift comprises more than 5,000 un-catalogued artworks, including several original works created by Norman Rockwell, plus an archive of hundreds of thousands of items. With this newest acquisition, a collection that began with 125 paintings Norman Rockwell placed in trust with the Museum in 1974 now numbers more than 13,000 artworks. The Famous Artists School gift advances the Museum’s aim to develop an encyclopedic collection of American illustration, creating a cultural context around its signature Norman Rockwell collection. The museum has also added several new donations of original Norman Rockwell artwork to its collection.

The New Bedford Art Museum and ArtWorks! have merged. Noelle Foye, who has been serving as the executive director of both organizations since September and will continue to direct the new one, said the merger places an emphasis on community involvement and outreach in the arts. She said the new organization will continue to hold a wide variety of exhibitions, as the museum is accustomed to doing, while bringing in educational programming from ArtWorks! "Together we can have a greater impact than either of our organizations could have independently," she said.
Phillips Academy Head of School John Palfrey recently announced the successful conclusion of the Addison Gallery of American Art’s fundraising campaign—a $30 million effort that included $22 million for the expansion and renovation of the museum building and $8 million to strengthen the Addison’s endowment. Both phases of this ambitious undertaking—the largest and most comprehensive fundraising campaign in the museum’s history—secure the Addison’s position as a nationally renowned museum of American art and the only museum of its caliber on a secondary school campus.
The American Textile History Museum in Lowell, which holds the world’s largest, publicly held collections of tools, spinning wheels, hand looms, has received a $1 million bequest. The gift came from the estate of longtime museum benefactors G. Gordon and Marjorie Osborne, whose legacy lives on in the museum’s Osborne Library bearing their name. “Gordon and Marjorie Osborne contributed significantly to this museum’s success through the years, and it is a great honor to be remembered in their estate plans,” said ATHM President and CEO Jonathan Stevens. “This generous bequest will be used to further the legacy of this wonderful couple, supporting ATHM as a world-class museum that preserves, protects, and interprets the rich textile history of our country.”
Heritage Museums & Gardens plans to open a year-round preschool focusing on science, technology, engineering and math. The goal is to open The Hundred Acre School with 40 students ages 4 and 5 in the fall, said Ellen Spear, president and CEO of Heritage Museums & Gardens. The Hundred Acre School will be a U.S. first: a STEM preschool housed in a museum with a curriculum aligned with the local public school system and local library, she said. The cost of opening the private, nonprofit preschool is estimated at $1.5 million, including the cost of renovating the art and carousel building to include two preschool classrooms. The Department of Early Education and Care is giving Heritage $164,212 in seed money. Museum officials also are raising funds privately for the renovation.
The Peabody Essex Museum received a $300,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, for the implementation of a major exhibition that explores the work of American artist Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975).
The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute celebrated the grand opening of its new campus on July 4.The new Visitor Center, designed by Tadao Ando Architect & Associates, features more than 11,000 square feet of special exhibition space. A new Museum Store, café, and the main admissions desk are also housed in the glass, concrete, and granite building. Indoor and outdoor walkways connect the Visitor Center to the original Museum Building, which has been newly reconceived by Selldorf Architects, New York with renovated and expanded gallery spaces that increase overall gallery space by fifteen percent. A one-acre tiered reflecting pool is the focal point of the landscape design conceived by Reed Hilderbrand, Cambridge, Massachusetts, which unites the architecture with the 140-acre campus and expands the Clark’s walking trails. Renovation work will continue through the summer on the Manton Research Center, following a recent decision to install a new skylight system over the central lobby area.

New Hampshire

In the past year, staff, interns, and volunteers at The American Independence Museum refreshed spaces and added three new exhibits, including a hands-on Children's Exhibit at the Folsom Tavern funded in part by a $3,500 donation from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. Additional exhibits chronicle the history of the Society of the Cincinnati, and Medicine During the Revolutionary War. In May, the museum participated in a momentous loan for the exhibit titled Timeless Treasures, created out of a new partnership between Service Credit Union, Veterans Count and AIM. The cases created for these precious items, handmade by D.R. Dimes, are now at home at the Ladd-Gilman House. The Museum has expanded its operating hours and programming, and now welcomes all active and retired military and veterans and their immediate families to tours all year long, and to the Independence Festival. And finally, the museum added to its collection a handwritten letter by George Washington to General John Sullivan.
The Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery at Keene State College will be celebrating its 50 anniversary in 2015.
Wolfeboro's four museums, the Wright Museum, the New Hampshire Boat Museum, the Clark House Museum and the Libby Museum, are proud to announce their collaboration with 10 other New Hampshire museums to form a consortium called “Experience New Hampshire Heritage: The Portsmouth to Plymouth Museum Trail”. The consortium's goal is to create awareness of the many exciting history and cultural heritage museums in the Portsmouth to Plymouth region. By taking the Portsmouth to Plymouth Museum Trail, visitors will encounter the authentic New Hampshire experience in diverse museums, historic sites and homes. The Trail members are (south to north): Strawbery Banke Museum, Portsmouth; Albacore Park Museum, Portsmouth; American Independence Museum, Exeter; Millyard Museum, Manchester; Woodman Museum, Dover; New Hampshire Farm Museum, Milton; Cantebury Shaker Village, Cantebury; Belknap Mill Society, Laconia; Clark House Museum, Wolfeboro; Libby Museum, Wolfeboro; New Hampshire Boat Museum, Wolfeboro; Wright Museum of WWII History, Wolfeboro; Castle in the Clouds, Moultonborough; Remick Country Doctor Museum & Farm, Tamworth and The Museum of the White Mountains, Plymouth.
The Wolfeboro Sailboat Sharing Program (a partnership between Wolfeboro Parks and Recreation, New Hampshire Boat Museum and Brewster Academy) has been selected by the editors of New Hampshire Magazine as “Best of NH 2014”. The innovative program was started 3 years ago when a boat was donated to the New Hampshire Boat Museum by Tuftonboro resident Bill Stockman. Community members and visitors can buy a “membership” or “share” of the boat for a season, and then use the boat throughout the season without the hassle of ownership, registration, maintenance, etc. The program effectively lowers the cost of boating so that a diverse array of community members can get out and enjoy sailing on Lake Winnipesaukee.

As part of its 30th anniversary year celebration, the Children's Museum of New Hampshire has updated its branding to reflect the Museum's dynamic mission and vision for the future. The new look is the culmination of more than a year of work that included completion of a long-range plan by board and staff members, revised mission and vision statements, competitive analysis, and creation of a new logo, color palette and brand standards that capture the Museum's creative focus and playful environment.
The Children’s Museum of New Hampshire has been awarded a $10,000 grant from the Liberty Mutual Foundation to support innovative programming for families with children diagnosed with autism. Exploring Our Way, the museum’s autism partnership program, is in its fifth year of operation and welcomes hundreds of families each year at no charge. The new grant from the Liberty Mutual Foundation will help underwrite free admission for families as well as expand promotion to maximize the program’s reach and impact.
The Seacoast Science Center was granted authorization by the National Marine Fisheries Service to lead New Hampshire's marine mammal rescue effort, effective January 1, 2014. The Center's Marine Mammal Rescue Team responds to stranded, injured and diseased seals, whales, porpoises, and dolphins in NH's coastal region. The Center's new exhibit informs visitors about the most common species seen, pin points response locations, and illustrates how the Team protects these important sentinels of the sea through response and education.
The Aidron Duckworth Art Museum received a grant from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation in June 2014, supporting the programs for Guest Artist Exhibitions, and Art Workshops, offered at the Museum. In addition, the Trustees added three new members: Justin Rendahl and Julie Haskell-Webb of Plainfield, and Diane Miller-Liggett of Cornish, NH.

Rhode Island

The International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum in Newport, Rhode Island has broken ground on the first project within a multi-faceted $15.7 million capital campaign and improvement project. The four primary focus areas of the project, which is funded by the Match Point Capital Campaign, are to add additional tennis courts and facilities; to strategically expand the Hall of Fame's footprint in a manner that is in keeping with Newport's historic aesthetic and enhances the community; to upgrade the museum with new technology and enhanced exhibitions; and to improve campus-wide amenities including upgrades to the tennis stadium. International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum celebrates its 60^th anniversary in 2014.
The Newport Historical Society’s accomplishments have reached an international audience over the last few years. Recent achievements in the digital realm – the online collections database called Gladys, and an award-winning mobile app, Explore Historic Newport (NewportHistoryApp.com) – have been spear-headed by the Society’s Registrar / Archivist Stacie Parillo. Stacie was recently accepted to become a Community Rep for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), which works to bring together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.
The research team at the Newport Historical Society is reinterpreting its traditional house museum, the c. 1697 Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House. Instead of displaying chamber pots and rope beds, the property will open its historic doors in 2015 as Revolution House, Newport’s sole museum devoted to the American Revolution. There will be dedicated exhibit space to showcase the important role that Newport played in the build-up to and conduct of the Revolutionary War. Innovative exhibits and displays will be installed in the house, which will use artifacts and documents from the Society’s collections.
The president of a Rhode Island historical group says there is a deal in place to clear away one of the legal roadblocks to creating a new home for URI and RIC nursing programs. Patrick T. Conley, head of the Heritage Harbor Museum Corp. said the group has a deal to sell an easement and tax credits it has on the South Street Power Station to Boston developer CV Properties, headed by Brown University graduate Richard Galvin. After disbursements, the museum organization will be left with about $3.8 million. It will convert itself to a grant-making organization known as Heritage Harbor Foundation and allow the Rhode Island Foundation to administer those funds on its behalf. The museum organization will use about $500,000 to pay off a loan from the Providence Economic Development Partnership. Some of the money will go to paying Ken Orenstein, the museum’s executive director and to legal fees.
The Rhode Island Council for the Humanities has awarded a grant to support the development of an exhibit on a Tribute to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair at Hearthside House. In addition to the exhibit about the Fair displayed throughout the house, on July 13th the grounds were used to interpret the Fair with the re-creation of a slice of “The Pike,” carnival-type area of the Fair with entertainment, amusements, music and food. The Hearthside was the model for the Rhode Island State Building at the Fair. The building was not demolished after the Fair as most were, but instead became a family home. One of the families who lived in the house has donated the family’s World’s Fair collections to Hearthside, which was part of the July 13 exhibit. The World’s Fair Tribute’s theme focuses on Rhode Island Pride, as the state was in its heyday at the time with numerous industrial, educational, art, and agricultural achievements. For more information, visit www.hearthsidehouse.org or call 401-726-0597.
The Newport Restoration Foundation has purchased a pencil and watercolor sketch by Hudson River School painter Samuel Colman. The work, executed in 1865, provides an unusual perspective of the house and shop of Newport cabinetmaker John Goddard. This is the earlier of only two known images of Goddard's shop located on its original waterfront lot. The painting is exhibited in the entry hall at the Whitehorne House museum. The Newport Restoration Foundation also recently purchased Christopher Townsend's Bridge Street house and workshop, which will be used for research and scholarly endeavors.

Vermont

A new partnership has been announced between the Bennington Museum and Bennington College. The museum will start displaying some student work and bring in student curators to work on exhibits.
President Lincoln’s stovepipe hat from Hildene, The Lincoln Family Home in Manchester, Vermont travelled this spring to the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, the site of a Civil Rights Summit that marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was displayed side by side with LBJ’s signature cowboy hat in the “Cornerstones of Civil Rights” exhibit. Hildene Vice President and Creative Director, Laine Dunham noted that, “The topics discussed at the Summit fit squarely with the core values of the Hildene mission: perseverance, integrity and civic responsibility. The loan of our hat was particularly relevant given our current Pullman car exhibit, Many Voices, which is part of Vermont’s African American Heritage Trail and its content speaks to some of the issues discussed at the Summit.” Hildene brought the meticulously restored 1903 Pullman Palace car, Sunbeam, to the 412 acre Lincoln estate in 2011.