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The New Bedford Whaling Museum is located in New Bedford, Massachusetts, USA. The museum, through its collections and exhibitions, tells the story of the international whaling industry and the history more generally of the "Old Dartmouth" region (now the city of New Bedford and towns of Acushnet, Dartmouth, Fairhaven and Westport) situated along the south coast of Massachusetts. Governed by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society (ODHS), the museum collection contains over 750,000 items, including 3,000 pieces of scrimshaw and 2,500 logbooks (handwritten accounts of whaling voyages), both of which are the largest collections in the world. The Museum also houses an extensive collection of fine art, including works by major American artists who lived or worked in the New Bedford area, such as Albert Bierstadt, William Bradford, and Albert Pinkham Ryder, as well as significant collections of locally produced art, glass, furniture, and other decorative arts that flourished as a result of the wealth that whaling brought to New Bedford in the 19th century. The whale ship Lagoda, the world's largest ship model, is housed at the central core of the museum in the Jonathan Bourne Building, purpose-built in 1915 for the construction of the Lagoda. With an overall length of 59' and a mainmast 50' in height, the Lagoda is fully rigged and outfitted for an extended whaling voyage. The Whaling Museum complex includes 20 exhibit galleries housed within several contiguous historic buildings occupying an entire city block within New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. == History == On January 7, 1903, Ellis L. Howland, a news reporter for the ''Evening Standard'', presented a paper urging the establishment of a historical society and a museum:
On 22 July 1903, the 100 founding constituents of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society selected William W. Crapo, a local lawyer and congressman, as their President. At first, the museum rented rooms to display and store artifacts from the Masonic Building on the corner of Pleasant and Union street. However, by 1904 their membership had grown to almost 700 people and collections had been expanded to include some 560 artifacts. In 1906, Henry Huttleston Rogers donated the Bank of Commerce Building on Water Street to the ODHS for the purpose of establishing a museum. Just a year later, the New Bedford Whaling Museum was opened. The teens and twenties were exciting decades for the New Bedford Whaling Museum. In 1914, the ODHS appointed Frank Wood as the curator and first full-time staff member. A year later, Emily Bourne donated the Bourne Building in memory of her father, Jonathan Bourne Jr. The Bourne Building now houses the Lagoda, a half-sized model of Bourne's whaling ship. In 1922, the famous whaling movie ''Down to the Sea in Ships'' was filmed in New Bedford. with young actress Clara Bow and many New Bedford locals dressed up in their grandparents' clothing to fit the scene. By the 1930s, the New Bedford Whaling Museum was attracting four to ten thousand visitors a year, most of whom were from out of town. The museum further expanded at the bequest of the Wood Building by Annie Seabury Wood in 1935. But perhaps the most important addition of the decade was the acquisition of a juvenile humpback whale skeleton, suspended in the Lagoda room. In the words of curator William Tripp: "We are no longer a whaling museum without a whale, as some in the past have chosen to call us." New Bedford experienced a bit of the limelight in 1953 when the whaling-inspired film ''All the Brothers Were Valiant'' premiered in the city. The "save-the-whale" movement of the 1970s led John R. Bockstoce, the Curator of Ethnology, to research and compile the most complete data on the Bowhead whale to date, reestablishing the importance of the preservation of historical whaling documents. In 1996, the NBWM played a large role in establishing a New Bedford Whaling National Historic Park, a national park which includes several New Bedford historical sites including the Seamen's Bethel, located across the street from the Whaling Museum. The museum features a twenty-minute short film titled ''The City that Lit the World'' courtesy of the National Park Service. 1996 was also the year of the first annual Moby-Dick Marathon Reading. In 1998, the NBWM collaborated with the Azorean Maritime Heritage Society and built the Azorean Whaleman Gallery, an exhibition devoted to the contributions of Azorean sailors and whaleboat builders to U.S. whaling history. In August 2000, the Jacobs Family Gallery was built thanks to the donation of Irwin and Joan Jacobs. A new blue whale skeleton, named KOBO (King of the Blue Ocean) was suspended from the ceiling. In 2001, the Kendall Whaling Museum merged with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, an acquisition of some 70,000 artifacts, effectively doubling the size of collections. To accommodate all these artifacts, the NBWM acquired the former bank building located Purchase Street, three blocks west of the museum campus on Johnny Cake Hill. The Purchase Street Building currently houses the museum's Research Library.〔Information derived from Exhibition materials within NBWM (October, 2008)〕 In 2002, the New Bedford Whaling Museum partnered with the Melville Society, and now houses their extensive Melville collection in the Research Library. On 22 September 2008, James P. Russell assumed the position of President and CEO of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.〔NBWM Press Release, "New Bedford Whaling Museum Names New President", 19 Sep. 2008.()〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「New Bedford Whaling Museum」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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