New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
Crews from the New Bedford Public Facilities Department have put the finishing touches on a newly renovated New Bedford Art Museum, a regional hub for arts and culture located in the heart of Downtown New Bedford. Located at 608 Pleasant Street, the museum exhibits art and objects from a variety of sources, including artist’s collections, private collectors and cultural institutions. The renovations included replacing the museum’s worn-out carpeting with new vinyl inlaid flooring—a more durable, easier to care for material that enhances the museum space. In addition, Art Museum employees and community volunteers helped repaint the entire interior of the Museum’s ground-level display space. New Bedford Floor Covering installed the flooring and donated the new carpeting at the Museum’s entryway.
Among other new features, the newly renovated Museum includes “The City Gallery,” a permanent display space for the New Bedford Free Public Library’s art collection. This dedicated exhibit space will enable more of the Library’s unique collection to be shared on a rotating basis with different audiences.
The first installation at the City Gallery is a sampler show. It contains highlights from the library collection, including oil paintings, watercolors and prints by artists like William Bradford, John James Audubon, Robert Swain Gifford, Charles Henry Gifford, Dodge Macknight and Dwight Tryon. Future exhibits will have specific focuses. For example, the next two shows will be dedicated to “preservation challenges” and women artists.
Much of the New Bedford Free Public Library collection is on exhibit at the Main Library and the current exhibit is entitled; “Liberty or Anarchy: New Bedford and the Civil War.”
