Exhibit Status: Current

Where do artists find their inspiration? In ancient Greece, the Muses were supernatural beings who inspired artists, scholars, and writers to create their works. The upcoming exhibit, Sea as Muse, explores the ways that the sea provided a similar inspiration for decorative arts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Opening in September 2021, the exhibit showcases fine silver trophies and woodcarvings from the vast collections of Mystic Seaport Museum. Dolphins and mermaids, seaweed and sea urchins, fast ships and ocean waves—visitors will find many delightful details like these, inspired by sea life and life on the seas. 

Silversmithing tools and in-progress pieces loaned by the Providence Jewelry Museum help demonstrate the making process, and interviews with living artisans shed light on both the process and the preparation necessary. New research provides a rare glimpse of some of the immigrant artists and artisans of the past who used their talent and skill to create a variety of beautiful objects in the exhibit. Offering visitors new ways of seeing and understanding American and British decorative arts, Sea as Muse also demystifies the visual languages of artistic expression.

Sea as Muse is the fourth and final exhibit funded by a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Like Open Ocean, Sailor Made, and the 2020 reinstallation of ships’ figureheads, Sea as Muse brings new knowledge, insight, and perspective to treasures in Mystic Seaport Museum’s collections.

After more than 40 years, the Museum’s figureheads exhibit received a makeover. Through a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, curators Katherine Hijar and Mirelle Luecke re-imagined this visitor favorite with a major new exhibit, Figureheads & Shipcarvings.

Since ancient times and across cultures, decorations have adorned the bows of boats and ships, from the Nile and the Mediterranean to the far North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Dutch and English ships of the 19th century were the first to sport figureheads like the ones we know today. Lions and unicorns were particular favorites of the English navy, and Dutch naval ships featured red lions. Spanish ships mounted figureheads depicting saints, no doubt to ensure blessings and safe passage. By the 18th century, European shipcarvers crafted figureheads that depicted a wide array of subjects, human and animal. The decline of figureheads came with the advent of steam power in the late 19th century, which influenced changes in the design of oceangoing ships. Since steam-powered ships no longer required rigging for sails, ships’ bows no longer provided a natural place for a figurehead to be mounted.

The new exhibit showcases the depth and breadth of the Museum’s carving collections. In addition to figureheads, it features other 19th-century ship carvings, shop figures, and our latest acquisition, a magnificent carousel hippocampus. The exhibit showcases only a fraction of the Museum’s collection. Because of space limitations, 45 figureheads and dozens of other maritime carvings will remain in the Museum’s vaults.

Ship’s figureheads were an important form of public art in the 19th century. A figurehead gave a ship its personality, and each one expressed a unique meaning, imbued with values and reflecting popular culture of the time. This reinterpretation aims to help visitors see these objects through 19th-century eyes, and to understand and appreciate the craft of carving and figureheads as an important art form.