Exhibits & Collections

Museum Collections | Exhibits | New Exhibits

Museum Collections:
The Martha's Vineyard Museum campus accomodates both the Island's largest museum and the only research library dedicated to the history of the Vineyard.

The objects collections of the MVM, donated or purchased over the past 80 years, includes over 30,000 items relating to all aspects of life on Martha’s Vineyard.  Specific collection categories include: agricultural tools, archaeological material, paintings, prints and sculpture, baskets, coins, costumes, decoys, hunting and fishing and shell fishing tools, ethnographic material brought back from the all over the world by Vineyard whalers, armament, guns and swords,   furniture and household equipment, medical and scientific tools and equipment, musical instruments, fossils and botanical samples, maritime-related tools, sailor’s artwork such as scrimshaw and inlaid work, ship models, shipwreck salvage materials, Wampanoag tools, woodworking tools, toys, a whaleboat, Nomansland fishing boat, wagon, sleigh, fire engine and an 1854 first order Fresnel Lens used in the Gay Head Aquinnah lighthouse for almost 100 years.

The Library and Archive collection spans every period of the Island's complex history. Beyond the 5,000 book research library, the MVM's paper collection contains materials from the 17th century through the 21st century. These collections include such items as: manuscripts, ship logbooks, postcards, Island business account books, legal papers and land deeds, family correspondence, Island organizational records, ship account books, and scrapbooks. Additionally, the library holds 500 Island maps and 400 nautical charts. The Library collection also contains an extensive photo collection of historic images of Vineyard tourism, homes, individuals, and communities. More information about the Library and Archives can be obtained through the Library/Archives section of the MVM website.

Donating an Item to the Collection:
The Museum welcomes and encourages the donation of material that relates to Martha's Vineyard History. If you are interested in donating an item, we encourage you to look at our Collection Development and Acquisitions Policy statement. The document provides the reader with an over-view of the types of materials that we seek to collect as well as an over-view of the steps taken to acquire an object. The Museum also recommends that you directly contact the Curator Dana Costanza Street for three dimensional objects, paper objects and photographs. If the Museum decides to accept your donation, a donor form will need to be filled out. The donor form serves as a permanent record of the gift. The donor of an item is responsible for providing an appraised value - the Museum is legally prevented from providing appraisals. If the donor wishes to provide a monetary value for the gift, this figure will go on the donation form and serves as the receipt which can be used as a tax deduction.

Research and the MVM Collections:
Specific collection items are available for research purposes through an appointment with the Curator Dana Costanza Street. The MVM encourages on-site research visits. Please consult our Staff Directory.

Application for Permission to Photograph, Publish or Display Images of Collection Items Belonging to the MVM

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MVM Campus Map

Key: 1. Gate House

         2. Gale Huntington Research Library and Archive

         3. Pease House Galleries and Museum Gift Shop

         4. First Order Fresnel Lens

         5. Carriage Shed

         6. Cooke House (c.1740)

Exhibits

The Cooke House:
Thomas Cooke House, Open mid-June through Columbus Day weekend.
This Colonial house (c. 1740) was built by and lived in by members of the Cooke family for four generations.
The house is the only example of its style and period on the Island that has not been modernized. The Cooke House has 11 rooms of exhibits of Vineyard history.
Topics presented include:

Pease House Galleries, Open All Year:
10,000 Years on Martha's Vineyard
The Wampanoag Gallery explores the presence of the Island’s first inhabitants. It displays spearpoints that are thousands of years old, a 3,000 year -old soapstone vessel, a 700 year- old ceramic vessel,  woodworking and other tools.  The exhibit also addresses the physical and environmental changes to this area and the adaptations made by the Wampanoag to environmental as well as the deleterious effects of English colonization. Information about the Wampanoag Tribe today is available.

The Fresnel Lens Tower:
Fresnel Lens is Located in the Lighthouse Tower on the MVM Campus, Open All Year
This lens was designed and manufactured in France in 1854 and consists of over 1,000 individual prisms. It was exhibited in the Paris Exposition of Industry in 1856 and was subsequently purchased by the United States government. The present lighthouse tower was constructed by the Society in 1951 when the original, Fresnel Lens from the Gay Head Lighthouse was removed by the Coast Guard. In a bid to save the lens, Island school children helped raise money to relocate the lens to the MVM campus. Visitors may view the actual lens as well as information on the history of the lens. Visitors may view the lens and its original clockwork mechanism as well as historic images and information about its history.

Vineyard Voices' Gallery:
Pease House Galleries, Open All Year
This gallery is located in the Frances Pease House and features oral testimonies and photographs of Islanders. These materials are drawn from ongoing oral history project conducted by the MVM's Oral History Center. The MVM has over 1,200 interviews of Island residents. Visitors can read excerpts of oral history transcripts. But, they can also listen to actual testimony and watch video from our video testimony collection. New "voices" are added periodically to the exhibit. More information about the MVM oral history project can be obtained through the MVM's Oral History Center.

Kids' Space:
Pease House Galleries, Open All Year
This gallery is dedicated to the artwork and research projects of Island school children of all ages. New materials appear in this gallery each year. Educational Programs are also held in this space.

The Carriage Shed:
Open All Year
This building contains vessels and vehicles such as a restored 1856 fire engine, an Island-built whaleboat, a Nomansland boat, a sleigh, a hearse, a wagon, a Hawaiian dugout canoe and surfboards. There are quarter boards from famous shipwrecks, pieces of the Martha’s Vineyard Railroad, historic murals, whalebone weighing frame and many other interesting items on display.

The Tryworks:
Open All Year
This outdoor exhibit is a replica of a "trying out "station was located on the deck of a working whale ship. Two enormous kettles were enclosed in a brick heating unit. The tryworks served as a processing station for the rendering of whale oil. On board a ship, a whale's blubber was boiled, or "tried", to extract the oil.

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Current Exhibits:  2009

“Stella Waitzkin: Selected Works ”

Stella Waitzkin (1920-2003) began painting in the 1950's in her studio on Long Island. Her work was greatly inspired by avant-garde theatre and jazz and the abstract expressionist art of the time. She studied oil painting with Hans Hoffman and life drawing with Willem de Kooning. In the 1960's and 70's she began doing sculpture, performance art, and film. In 1973, she discovered polyester resin, which became her primary material. During a lengthy and extraordinarily productive career she had numerous one woman exhibitions and won many grants and awards. Her work is exhibited in dozens of major museums including the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian Institution. During the last twenty years of Stella's life she spent the majority of her time painting and making sculpture on Martha's Vineyard.

“The Ivory Canvas: Scrimshaw from the MVM Collections ”
The moments of terror that whalemen must have felt in the hunt were punctuated by many hours of boredom at sea. With little more than a jackknife and a whale's tooth, the seamen of whaling days gave us scrimshaw, the etching of images on ivory or bone, that quintessential American folk art. This exhibit includes a range of scrimshaw that might suprise you if your idea of the art is limited to images simply carved into a whale's tooth. Sailors carved a variety of objects from whalebone and decorated them elaborately, most often as gifts for loved ones back home. The box pictured above was given to Eliza Norton by her whaling captain husband, Richard Norton, around 1840.

"Picturing Oak Bluffs: JN Chamberlain's Vision Of A Resort "

This exhibit features one of the most remarkable sets of historic images ever donated to the Museum collection. These 'lost' images were discovered in the old eight-by-ten-inch glass plate format used by early professional photographers, most depicting scenes from Oak Bluffs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.The images were orignially discovered by Vineyarder Edward Krikorian after he purchased a building in Oak Bluffs. The plates were stored away for safe keeping. Eventually re-discovered, the Krikorians gave the plates to island photographer Alison Shaw. Recognizing their artistic and historic value, Ms. Shaw generously donated the plates to the MVM.

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