Cape Ann Residents, Seniors and Students $8.00

FACT SHEET

Location: The Cape Ann Museum is located at 27 Pleasant Street in downtown Gloucester’s Harbortown cultural district. The Museum is a short walk from the Gloucester stop on the MBTA.

Hours: The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sundays from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. The Museum is closed on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day.

Admission: Adults – $10.00

Cape Ann residents, seniors and students – $8.00

Museum members and youth (under 18) – FREE

Public Information:(978) 283-0455

Media Contact:Meredith Anderson

(978) 283-0455 x15

HISTORY

The Cape Ann Museum was founded in 1873 as the Cape Ann Scientific and Literary Associationto serveas the primary repository for Cape Ann’s art and cultural history. Major collections include fine art paintings, sculpture, and photography; maritime and fishing artifacts; textilesand furniture; granite quarrying industry history; and local history. More than 20,000 local, national, and international visitors come to the museum each year. More than 9,000 adults, children, and families attend the museum’s extensive program offerings annually. Rotating exhibits are part of the museum’s appeal. Spanning 44,000 square feet, the museum is a major cultural institution on Boston’s North Shore.Two historic homes: The White-Ellery House (1710) and the Captain Elias Davis House (1804) as well as two sculpture parks in the heart of Gloucester’s Downtown on Pleasant Street complete its attractions.

RECENT CAPITAL CAMPAIGN

Completion of a $5 million capital campaign is allowing the museum to add and redesign galleries, make essential infrastructure improvements—new lighting, heating, and ventilation, and raise its endowment. Also in development is the Fitz Henry Lane Catalogue Raisonné Project, a complete online catalogue that will allow visitors to explore all of Lane’s art from the Museum and other sites throughout the world alongside scholarship on these works.

MAJOR FINE ART COLLECTIONS

Cape Ann Museum hasthe world’s largest collection of art by Luministmarine painter Fitz Henry Lane, a leading 19th century artist and Gloucester native, including more than 40 oil paintings and 100 drawings. The museum’s core collection also includes extensive holdings of works by 19th and 20th century artists who lived on or visited Cape Ann or who were inspired by the area including: Winslow Homer, Cecilia Beaux, Maurice Prendergast, John Sloan, Stuart Davis, Marsden Hartley, Nell Blaine, Frank Duveneck, and Milton Avery. Renowned American sculptures in the collection were created by: Walker Hancock, Paul Manship, Charles Grafly, Anna Hyatt Huntington, and Katherine Lane Weems.Contemporary artists are also included in the collection.

MAJOR TEXTILE AND DECORATIVE ARTS COLLECTION

The museum houses the largest collection of American textilesby the Folly Cove Designers, a Cape Ann area guild of designer-craftswomen, organized by author and illustrator Virginia Lee Burton. The group printed whimsical patterns on fabric with carved linoleum blocks from 1941-1970.The exhibit includes: their original Acorn press, printed textiles, and items made from their fabrics.On display in the Captain Elias Davis Houseand throughout the galleries, the furniture and decorative arts collection conveys a sense of what life was like on Cape Ann. Examples of the superb craftsmanship found here include: Chippendale sideboards, Sheraton worktable, Paul Revere silver christening basins and beakers.

MARITIME AND QUARRY INDUSTRY HISTORY

Art and artifacts in the collection explore America’s early industries—fishing, boatbuilding and related trades and commerce—in its oldest seaport. An original 13-foot-high Fresnel lens that guided seafarers to safety for nearly 120 years anchors the collection along with three intact historic vessels and detailed 19th century ship models. The history of Cape Ann’sgranite quarrying industry is exploredthroughsamples of local granite, tools, equipment, personal effects, documents, photographs, paintings, and sculpture related quarrying.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES

With more than100,000 images of people, places, and things related to Cape Ann from the 1840s to the present, the museum is a vital resource for researchers and archivists with an extensive collection of locally relevant letters, memoirs and diaries, financial papers and account books logbooks and vessel manifests, military rolls, orders and awards, and other memorabilia.