Mystic Seaport Museum is the nation’s largest maritime museum. Founded in 1929 to gather and preserve the rapidly disappearing artifacts of America’s seafaring past, the Museum has grown to become a national center for research and education with the mission to inspire an enduring connection to the American maritime experience. The Museum’s grounds cover 19 acres on the Mystic River in Mystic, CT and include a recreated 19th century coastal village, a working shipyard, exhibit halls, and state-of-the-art artifact storage facilities. The Museum is home to more than 500 historic watercraft, including four National Historic Landmark vessels, most notably the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan, America’s oldest commercial ship still in existence. With a full-time staff of 150 that swells to 350 during the summer season, the Museum hosts over 250,000 visitors annually. Mystic Seaport employs a diverse staff of scholars, librarians, historic interpreters, educators, scientists, musicians, and skilled artisans. A stroll through the historic village transports visitors back to the mid-1800s where they can experience firsthand from staff historians, storytellers, musicians, and craftspeople just what life was like to earn one's living from the sea. In the Henry B. du Pont Preservation Shipyard, they can watch shipwrights keeping the skills and techniques of traditional shipbuilding alive as they restore and maintain the Museum’s watercraft collection. The Museum’s 41,000 sq. ft. Collections Research Center (CRC) offers access to more than 2 million artifacts and is also home to the G.W. Blunt White Library, a 75,000-volume research library where scholars from around the world come to study America’s maritime history. For more than 80 years, visitors, students, and scholars have turned to Mystic Seaport to preserve and interpret America’s maritime experience. The Museum’s commitment to that mission is as strong as ever.

The MHS promotes understanding of the history of Massachusetts and the nation by collecting and communicating materials and resources that foster historical knowledge.

To advance the study of family history in America and beyond, we educate, inspire and connect people through our scholarship, collections, and expertise. Founded in 1845, New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is the country’s leading resource for family history research. We help genealogists of all skill levels improve their knowledge and understanding of their family and its place in history. Although our name says New England, we provide expertise and research in nearly all aspects of family history, from 17th-century colonial New England through twentieth-century immigration research. We maintain our award-winning website, AmericanAncestors.org, as the online repository for more than 1 billion searchable names from America and beyond.

The Preservation Society of Newport County, Rhode Island’s largest cultural organization, preserves and protects the best of Newport County’s architectural heritage. Its 11 historic properties and landscapes - seven of which are National Historic Landmarks - form a complete essay of American historical development from the Colonial era through the Gilded Age. In keeping with its mission, the Society strives to offer its members and the public a comprehensive view of each property’s architecture, interiors, landscapes and social history. The Society hosts more than 800,000 visits to its properties annually. The Preservation Society was founded in 1945 as a private, non-profit educational organization. Admission charges, membership dues, fundraising events and donations help the Society to carry out its mission of protecting Newport’s heritage for present and future generations. Other sources of income include property rentals for private and corporate events, educational sales and product licensing. Further, its historic properties have served as backdrops for a number of major feature films, advertising and photography shoots. The Society’s central office is located in a former historic home at 424 Bellevue Avenue, Newport. For more information, call (401) 847-1000 or visit www.NewportMansions.org.

The Worcester Art Museum creates transformative programs and exhibitions, drawing on its exceptional collection of art. Dating from 3,000 BC to the present, these works provide the foundation for a focus on audience engagement, connecting visitors of all ages and abilities with inspiring art and demonstrating its enduring relevance to daily life. Creative initiatives— including pioneering collaborative programs with local schools, fresh approaches to exhibition design and in-gallery teaching, and a long history of studio class instruction—offer opportunities for diverse audiences to experience art and learn both from and with artists. Since its founding in 1896, the Worcester Art Museum has assembled a collection of 38,000 objects: from the ancient Near East and Asia, to European and American paintings and sculptures, and continuing with works by contemporary artists from around the world. WAM has a history of making large scale acquisitions, such as its Medieval Chapter House, the Worcester Hunt Mosaic, its 15th-century Spanish ceiling, and the Flemish Last Judgment tapestry. In 2013, the Museum acquired the John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection comprising two thousand arms and armor objects. It continues to commission and present new works, such as 2017’s installation of the interactive Reusable Universes and Organic Concept works by Shi Chieh Huang.

Since its founding in 1936, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and augmenting art’s role as educator, incubator, and convener for social engagement. Its innovative exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. Spanning two locations across Boston Harbor, the ICA offers year-round programming at its iconic building in Boston’s Seaport and seasonal programming (May–September) at the Watershed in an East Boston shipyard.

The Boston Athenæum, “Boston’s best kept secret” (Boston.com) and one of the most distinguished libraries in the nation, was founded in 1807. Its landmark 1849 building and architecturally significant reading rooms at 10½ Beacon Street welcome readers, thinkers, writers, and learners in the heart of Boston. Highlights of the library’s holdings include the King’s Chapel Library collection, with roots in the 17th-century settlement of Boston; rare publications in Native American languages; the personal library of George Washington; historic early European printed works; and numerous works of fine art, including portraits of notable Americans such as Hannah Adams, John Marshall, and Alexander Hamilton, and by artists such as Gilbert Stuart, John Singer Sargent, Allan Rohan Crite, and Polly Thayer Starr. An extensive collection on the art of the book includes exquisite and rare examples from many eras of bookbinding and fine printing, as well as contemporary artists’ books. Learn more at bostonathenaeum.org.

Modeled after a Venetian palazzo, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston houses one of the world’s most remarkable art collections surrounded by the visual splendors of the flower-filled courtyard and immersive galleries.

Revolutionary Spaces is the parent organization overseeing the historic Old South Meeting House and Old State House as both landmarks and museums, as well as gathering spaces for the open exchange of ideas and the continuing practice of democracy. Revolutionary Spaces brings people together to explore the American struggle to create and sustain a free society.

The EcoTarium is a historical museum in Worcester, Massachusetts, with indoor/outdoor interactive exhibits to inspire a passion for science and nature. The EcoTarium offers three floors of interactive exhibits, shows in the Alden Digital Planetarium, daily Science Discovery programs, live animal habitats, hikes through forest and meadow nature trails, an express train ride around the grounds (seasonal), and unlimited play in the expansive outdoor exhibit, Nature Explore®. The EcoTarium is well rooted in the Worcester community as an organization dedicated to the study of science and nature. The private, non-profit institution was founded in 1825 as the Worcester Lyceum of Natural History and was incorporated in 1884 as the Worcester Natural History Society — EcoTarium's legal identity. A transition from the New England Science Center to the EcoTarium in 1998 refocused the museum in the natural sciences and hands-on exploration and discovery. Much of the museum's work today continues to reflect the ideologies and practices adopted almost 200 years ago.