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Monday
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Tuesday
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This installation offers a global perspective on our creative response to the sea.
PEM’s Maritime art collection, which is the finest in the country, frames the sea as an enduring source of opportunity as well as peril, a force that inspires creativity and innovation, and encourages engagement with the wider world. This installation located in the Byrne Family gallery offers a global perspective on our creative response to the sea, from a 17th-century brass Pakistani astrolabe to Valerie Hagerty’s monumental Shipwrecked Armoire with Barnacles (2012) and artworks that reflect Salem’s rich history of maritime trade and exploration. Immersive digital media amplify compelling stories that lay behind unassuming objects, like a calendar stick from 1803 whose carved notches record the long days that Rhode Island native, James Drown, spent shipwrecked and left for dead on Tristan da Cunha, a remote speck island in the South Atlantic.
Share your impressions on social media using the hashtag #PEMmaritime.
Stern detail of Bassett-Lowke LTD, Model of RMS Queen Elizabeth, 1947– 1948. White mahogany, gunmetal, brass. Peabody Essex Museum, Gift of Cunard Line Ltd. © Peabody Essex Museum. Photography by Bob Packert/PEM.
Micronesian artist, stick chart, late 19th century. Wood, shell, cordage. Gift of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. © Peabody Essex Museum. Photography by Jeffrey Dykes/PEM.
Detail of William Rush, figurehead, 19th century. Wood (pine), paint. Museum purchase. © Peabody Essex Museum. Photography by Bob Packert/PEM.
Yami artist, Tatara (canoe), date unknown. Wood, pigment/paint. Built by the Yami tribe in Taiwan for night fishing. Gift of Dr. D. Carleton Gajdusek © Peabody Essex Museum/PEM. Photography by Jeffrey Dykes/PEM.
English artist, punch bowl, 1800-1801. Glazed creamware. East India Marine Society Collection. Gift of Benjamin Hodges. © Peabody Essex Museum. Photography by Walter Silver/PEM.
Maquim Muhammed, planespheric astrolabe, 15th-16th century from Lahore, Pakistan. Brass. Gift of Richard Wheatland. © Peabody Essex Museum.
George Ropes, Sailing from Salem Harbor on the 21st of February 1802, painted before 1819. Oil on canvas. © Peabody Essex Museum. Photography by Jeffrey Dykes/PEM.
Indonesian artist, two-stem smoking pipe, ca. 1790. Metal, wood. East India Marine Society Collection. Gift of Captain Jonathan Carnes. © Peabody Essex Museum. Photography by Walter Silver/PEM.
Fitz Henry Lane, Ship Southern Cross in Boston Harbor, painted 1851. Oil on canvas. Gift of the Estate of Stephen Wheatland. © Peabody Essex Museum. Photography by Mark Sexton/PEM.
Virtual gallery tour
Click to embark on a 360° tour of PEM's Byrne Family Gallery of Maritime Art. Just click on the rings to move throughout the space and use your mouse or keyboard to zoom in/out and to look all around.
Curator interview
Curator Dan Finamore discusses a few of the objects Salem mariners brought back from the other side of the world.
Keep exploring
