The Museum is at the heart of a long arts tradition, exhibiting work by Cape Ann artists from all periods, including the present. Through its permanent collections and special exhibitions, the Museum explores the connection between artists and place, examining how Cape Ann affects the artists it attracts and how those influences carry over in a broader sense to the history of art in America.
The Museum holds the largest and preeminent collection of works - more than 40 paintings and 100 drawings - by the Gloucester born maritime artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865). The Museum?s largest gallery is dedicated to his work. The Museum also has important holdings of work by other late 19th and early 20th century painters who visited and worked on Cape Ann: Winslow Homer, Cecilia Beaux, Maurice Prendergast, John Sloan, Stuart Davis, Marsden Hartley and Milton Avery, among others. Works by Cape Ann sculptors Walker Hancock, Paul Manship, Anna Hyatt Huntington and Katherine Lane Weems are also part of the permanent collection. Perhaps the collection most representative of work created by artists who lived and worked on Cape Ann year-round is that of the Folly Cove Designers. Established in Gloucester in 1938, the Designers were a group who worked together as a guild of textile designer-craftsmen from 1941 until 1969. The Museum houses the largest collection of their work. It includes samples of their printed textiles and paper, items made from their fabrics and examples of the linoleum blocks they carved. An Acorn press used by one of the Designers is also on display.
The maritime and fishing collections reflect Cape Ann?s preeminence in seafaring pursuits. Two galleries dedicated to the history of maritime trade and the fishing industry feature tools, equipment, models, as well as two small vessels which made solo Atlantic crossings and a full-sized fishing dory. Historic photographs, sculpture and fine art inspired by the industry and those who worked in it are essential to placing the collection in context. Tools, artifacts, historic photographs, and fine art, also tell the tale of Cape Ann?s granite industry, which flourished in the 19th century and ended in the 1930s.
The two historic homes owned by the Museum, the White-Ellery House (1710) and the Captain Elias Davis House (1804) bridge two distinct periods in Gloucester's history - the time of the Cape's earliest English settlers, who were part of a rural, subsistence economy, and the era of ship?s captains, reflected by the growth of the maritime trades and the development of a merchant class. The White-Ellery House and barn are located at the gateway to the City of Gloucester -what was once the original town green -and is now directly off the Rte. 128 rotary. The Davis House is located on Pleasant Street, nearer to the working harbor, on what was once known as "Captain's Row." The Davis House is an integral part of the Museum's 27 Pleasant Street facility.
The decorative arts collection helps to round out the picture of community life in earlier days. The collection includes important 18th and 19th century American furniture; objects obtained in trade with the Far East, Europe and Surinam; a rare British Red Coat, Paul Revere silver made for Gloucester?s First Parish Church; and textiles, pewter and glassware from area homes of the past.