Local Artist Showcase
First Floor
Banner Image: (L-R) Works by artists Susan Mendyn, Roy Rossow, Milton Brighton, David Formanek, Hannah Robidoux
The New Bedford Whaling Museum proudly celebrates and showcases some of the talented artists of the region. The exhibition rotates regularly and is located on the first floor of the Museum. This is an area that is accessible for free, no admission required.
The New Bedford Whaling Museum supports Local Artists by exhibiting work in a large wall vitrine in Jacobs Family Gallery, a prominent location that is highly visible and free for visitors. The Museum promotes these exhibitions on its website and through our social media.
Now Accepting Local Artist Submissions
The New Bedford Whaling Museum now invites local artists to apply to have their work featured in our Local Artists Case!
We accept submissions on a rolling basis for three exhibition time frames:
- January-April
- May-August
- September-December
Please refer to the FAQ below for more information and application requirements.
On View Now
The New Whaler, 2024
Beatrice Alder, Kate Frazer Rego, Aneshia Savino (zines and publications)
In 1928, Helen “Betsy” Ellis (1889-1978) and Imogene Weeks (ca. 1872-1960) opened The Whaler Bookshop in downtown New Bedford. The book shop, a circulating library, and a traveling bookstore called the Whaler on Wheels , operated for six years before closing in 1934. The New Bedford Whaling Museum invited artists Beatrice Alder and Kate Frazer Rego to create a bookshop-inspired art installation for present day New Bedford. Working with Marie Equi Zine Library Archivist and Artist Aneshia Savino, they created The New Whaler , a multi-part art installation reimagining the traveling Whaler on Wheels operated by Ellis , a New Bedford-based artist, bookseller, educator, and queer historical figure and Weeks, an educator and school administrator.
The ceramic plaques and collected histories in the Local Artist Showcase are just one part of The New Whaler project. Other parts of the installation include a human-powered mobile bookshop with titles related to LGBTQ+ history, whale and ocean ecology, social justice history, and children’s literature, in the exhibition Lighting the Way: SouthCoast Women’s Lives, Labors, Loves and bookshop signs in the Whaling Museum Water Street Storefront.
Artist Statement
“Each of these scrimshaw-inspired ceramic plaques depicts a queer historical space. Some have a known, documented queer history—The Gallery Bar, Gallery X, Haskell Gardens/Wild Heart Herb House, New Bedford High School—while others, such as the Ernestina-Morrissey, are historical spaces reclaimed and made inclusive by queer people today. Local institutions such as the Marie Equi Zine Library and the Queer Arts Council Pride Block Party lack a fixed, year-round location, serving as flexible, ephemeral spaces that respond to the needs of the queer community as they evolve.
Where homophobia is pervasive, documentation of queer history and culture is often scarce, or exists only for the most privileged classes. Older, working-class spaces such as the Ark and the Fo’c’sle (crew’s living quarters aboard a typical whaleship) certainly housed queer people and witnessed queer joys and struggles, even in the absence of specific written evidence. For that reason, I am so grateful to the people who shared their oral histories for this project, taking control of their own narratives and contributing to the queer community’s knowledge and sense of place.”
