|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The old Hiller Printing building on William Street may not be much to look at, but the New Bedford Whaling Museum has had an eye on it for decades.
Museum officials since the 1990s have looked across the street and seen the low, white stucco box with block windows — or at least the spot where it stands — as a potential part of the institution’s future. The timing was never right; then it was.
The museum is poised to demolish the building in the spring or summer, making way for an expansion that will serve as its new front door, gathering place, and much larger space for traveling exhibitions slated to open in the fall of 2026.
“We’re trying to create something timeless and beautiful,” said Amanda McMullen, the museum’s president and CEO.
Plans call for a transformation of the foot of William Street near where it meets North Water, creating a wider crosswalk for pedestrians between the existing museum complex on the south side of William, and the new building on the north.
The new structure is to stand about 40 feet, a bit taller than the
Cook Theater building that forms the current main entrance, but not as tall as the Bourne Building, the cupola-peaked structure housing the Lagoda whaling-ship model.
The ground floor — accommodating the new main entrance, gift shop, and a “community living room,” as McMullen put it — will be enclosed chiefly in glass. The design reflects the understanding that people feel more at ease and welcome when they can see into a space as they approach, she said.
The second-floor exhibition space will be wrapped on the outside in glazed terra cotta panels, suiting most of the present brick museum buildings in color, if not exactly materials.
For traveling exhibitions, size matters
The design by Machado Silvetti architects in Boston — whose portfolio includes art museums in Colorado, California, Florida, Wisconsin and New York — is meant to strike a balance, McMullen said.
“It’s important that it fits in, but also important that it stands out,” she said.
The project creates 20,000 square feet under roof, roughly a two-thirds expansion of existing space of 35,000 square feet. With one 6,000-square-foot room, the expansion will offer what the museum believes will be the largest up-to-date exhibition space in New England south of Boston, McMullen said.
Since the space will be devoted to traveling exhibits, size matters, McMullen said. Many institutions that organize road shows prefer larger spaces that the Whaling Museum now cannot provide.
“A lot of places want a 5,000 square-foot space,” she said. “It’s a value proposition for institutions,” considering the work of curating, packing and shipping. “It’s not worth it for them to do smaller square footage.”
Along with larger traveling shows, the new space will allow the museum to occasionally show an artifact in its own collection that has never fit existing space. The painted scroll 8 1/2- feet tall and 1,275 feet long — a movie precursor that emerged in the 19th century — is meant to unfurl before the viewer, creating a sensation of motion.
The “Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World” painted in 1848 by New Bedford artists Benjamin Russell and Caleb Purrington, was last shown in New Bedford at the Kilburn Mill in the South End in 2018.
The panorama has been to the Mystic Seaport Museum, will be on view at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona for nearly a year starting in March and will eventually be part of rotating shows at the expanded space in New Bedford.
Scrambling a fundraising drive
The total cost of the expansion is estimated as $32 million, of which the museum has raised $21 million from 104 donors. That includes nearly $3 million in three American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grants contributed by the City of New Bedford.
The numbers reckoning started with back-of-envelope scribbles in the summer of 2021, when McMullen was on vacation with family on Cape Cod. As McMullen recalls, it began with a call from Tony Sapienza, who heads the museum’s Board of Trustees.
Sapienza — president of the board of the New Bedford Economic Development Council, board vice-chair of The New Bedford Light — got word that the white stucco building at 11 William St. might be available.
Built in 1938 for a home-building business, later headquarters of Hiller Printing, most recently home of an artisanal beef jerky startup, the building had been in the museum’s sights for about 30 years.
During the phone call with Sapienza, McMullen said she immediately started scratching out a fundraising plan. The executive committee scrambled for “a quick huddle-up on how do we do this?”
In less than three weeks they had $1.1 million from 19 donors, McMullen said.
In early October 2021, the Old Dartmouth Historical Society — doing business as the New Bedford Whaling Museum — bought the place from a real estate trust for $1.5 million cash, according to state property records.
Enhancing the pitch for visitors
In spring 2022, the museum announced that an expansion plan was in the works, according to a report in The Standard-Times. Since December the city Department of Planning has been reviewing the project, which involves removing on-street parking for that portion of William Street. A portion of the street will be raised to be flush with the sidewalks, creating a wider crosswalk between the existing building and the new one.
Jennifer Carloni, who heads the agency, said the Planning Board, and the Historical Commission are expected to give their approvals on Feb. 12, and the Zoning Board of Appeals is likely to sign off on Feb. 20. A permit to demolish the building has already been approved, Carloni said.
Ashley Payne, the city’s director of tourism and marketing, said the expansion will be a fine addition to what is already one of New Bedford’s main attractions.
“It’s only going to make our job easier” in promoting the city, Payne said. The museum fits nicely into the city’s appeal to potential visitors’ interest in history, art, and modestly-priced family travel, Payne said.
The museum estimates that the museum’s economic impact comes to about $10 million a year: $3 million in visitor spending, and the balance in museum employment and spending, McMullen said.
The museum drew 82,143 visitors in 2024, McMullen said, approaching the 2019 pre-pandemic figure of 87,000.
Earned revenue of about $1.5 million in 2024 topped the figure of just over $1 million in 2019, the year before the pandemic cut earned revenue by nearly 75%. That includes admissions, gift-shop sales, and rentals, but not contributions to the museum, McMullen said.
McMullen said the traveling shows in the new space will include art, science and history. A show of part fine art, part environmental science is already scheduled for the opening in the fall of 2026.
Email reporter Arthur Hirsch at ahirsch@newbedfordlight.org.
More property owned by The old Dartmouth historical society that doesn’t pay taxes to the city of New Bedford. Just what the city needs, loss revenue.
It’s remarkable that the Whaling Museum can raise $21 million from only 104 donors while urgent community needs—affordable housing, small-business support, assistance for single parents, care for the elderly, and resources for those struggling with substance abuse—remain largely underfunded. Instead, local wealth and leadership continue directing money into vanity projects and tourism-driven ventures, prioritizing appearances over residents’ well-being.
The museum also raises ethical questions. While it doesn’t explicitly glorify whaling, it does little to acknowledge the era’s devastating impact, which many today rightly find troubling.
Yet this issue extends beyond a single institution. Surrounding communities often promote a predominantly white, affluent version of history while existing alongside—and arguably benefiting from—the cheap labor of New Bedford’s diverse, economically stressed population.
The Whaling Museum frequently highlights diversity in whaling, often pointing to the fact that escaped slaves found opportunities aboard whaling ships, where they could earn wages and escape the brutality of slavery. But there’s a clear gap in whose stories get told. Despite compelling evidence, the museum seems unwilling to acknowledge LGBTQ+ whalers and fishermen. Funding sources appear comfortable celebrating diversity only within certain boundaries—ones that do not challenge traditional narratives or risk alienating donors.
To be clear, tourism is an important part of New Bedford’s economy, and institutions like the Whaling Museum do bring in visitors whose spending supports local businesses. But the question isn’t just about whether these institutions provide economic benefit—it’s about who benefits the most and who gets left behind. When cultural institutions receive tens of millions in funding while core community needs remain unmet, it’s fair to ask whether our city is being shaped for its residents or merely around them.
In a city with pressing needs, dedicating tens of millions of dollars to expand a museum feels like a slap in the face. The Whaling Museum—and the broader network of institutions shaping our local narrative—have a moral obligation to critically examine whose stories they elevate and whose struggles they continue to ignore.