Inside the Upcoming Summer on Nantucket Exhibit with NHA’s Chief Curator

A travel poster of Nantucket, circa 1925

Beginning May 26 through November 1, the Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) is hosting an over-200-artifact exhibit, Summer on Nantucket: A History of the Island Resort in the McCausland Gallery at the Whaling Museum (13 Broad Street). Exclusively for Little ACK Book, NHA’s Chief Curator and Obed Macy Research Chair, Michael R. Harrison, walks us through the exhibit—delving into everything from the building and development of a resort economy since the 1840s to 1920s bathing costumes, rose-covered cottages (and things that aren’t), and even offering a glimpse of what’s to come. The full conversation, below.

How did the concept for the Summer on Nantucket exhibit come to fruition?

We like to do shows that are based on our collection and aspects of island history that we think our visitors might have an interest in knowing in more depth. We obviously run a whaling museum and we tell the Nantucket whaling story pretty well, but this island has been a summer destination since the 1840s and there’s a whole history to that now that we thought was worth exploring.

The arrival of a steamship to the island carrying passengers in 1905

Walk us through the exhibit. What’s the experience like?

The exhibition is in many ways thematic rather than chronological. We wanted to look at different aspects of summer. There is a bit of the introduction exploring why summer was chosen as the new economic engine after the collapse of whaling, but a central part of the exhibit is this idea of a resort economy; the building of a resort economy, looking at house construction, real estate sales, house maintenance, gardening, and how all of that is the engine—and it’s all based on people coming here for the summer.

We’ve got a big area that’s called “Impressions of Summer” that’s full of a lot of fun artifacts surrounding what you think of when you think of Nantucket summer; you think of rose-covered cottages, you think of Nantucket Lightship Baskets, or maybe you think of golf or going boating. There’s this whole case of objects from across time that are impressionistic of the fun, happy, and nostalgic sides of summer.

A 1920s bathing costume

And then we go through what we do here during summer; “Must-See, Must-Do” is what we’re calling it. We look at the beach (the beach is important here!) and we have a little setting with a 1920s bathing costume, 1940s bicycle, 1970s surfboard, and paintings of the early beaches; there’s a big, atmospheric projection looking at beach scenes across time.

Jetties Beach, circa 1919

We eventually get into more touristy things: museums, touring around the island and looking at the sights, fishing, boating, taking bus tours (the first motorbus tour around the island was in the 1920s and we have the original Captain Folger’s sign that the driver would lean outside of the bus). It’s a whole impressionistic area of all of the other things to do once you’re done at the beach.

Captain Folger’s bus tour sign

The show then progresses to where to stay. We explore hotels, houses, real estate, and what a summer home here looks like and how has that changed.

All of this is weaving around the perimeter of the gallery and in the center of the gallery, we’ve got mannequins dressed in items from the collection representing summer people. By “summer people,” we don’t just mean summer visitors but we also mean the people who work here. Summer happens because the locals are working their rears off, and there are an awful lot of people who come here to work in the summer.

Model A Ford with passengers on the way to Great Point, circa 1930s

You’re showcasing the leisure and the lighthearted but there’s also something very real and relevant that you’re talking about here, too.

We didn’t feel it was right to just suggest it’s all rose-covered cottages. There are rose-covered cottages, but people make this happen.

The other thing I should mention about this thematic layout of the show is that, once you get through most of the sections, we have one that’s called “It’s Not All Roses.” It looks more explicitly at the wide variety of work that people are doing here that undercurrents the summer experience, but also the island’s success has brought tradeoffs. The ones that are most on our minds today have a lot to do with crowding, housing, security, pricing, and real estate scarcity but these things have been debated and complained about on Nantucket since the 1870s.

One of the things we really wanted to convey with this exhibition is that there are aspects of summer that have changed, but there are a lot of aspects of summer here that have not changed—not just the negative ones but also the positive ones.

Where did you source most of the items in the exhibit?

The show is very much based on objects in our collection. We have a fairly large costume and textile collection and we want to get more of it out on view when we can. We’ve also been doing a lot more collecting over the last few years into the history of textile-making here on Nantucket since the 1960s, and a lot of it hasn’t been shown yet so we’re excited to get that out.

A postcard of Sankaty Head Lighthouse, circa 1970s

Do you see this exhibit extending into other seasons or do you think you’ll just leave it there?

One of the sections of the show is actually entitled “Winter” because the winter here is, in many ways, now all about the summer but we might just leave it there. There could definitely be something to do a whole show on winter, but we’re not at the moment conceiving this as a series.

One of the things that we are looking at perhaps long-term is if a smaller version of this show could live somewhere semi-permanently in our galleries to help round out that story. We’re always looking at if we’re adequately telling the right stories of Nantucket and helping explain the island to the people who visit and the people who live here—and it’s not all whaling.

Photos courtesy of Nantucket Historical Association