With artifacts ranging from gilded eagles to a sailmaker’s sewing machine, a log-built bugeye to an intimate scene of crabpickers, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum’s 50th anniversary exhibition, A Broad Reach: 50 Years of Collecting will be closing to the public on March 1, 2016, when the non-profit museum makes way for a new exhibition, Snapshots to Selfies: 50 Years of Chesapeake Summers, which is scheduled to open in CBMM’s Steamboat Building on May 22, 2016.
A Broad Reach opened on May 23, 2015, and features 50 significant objects that have been accessioned into the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum’s collection over the past 50 years.
Snapshots to Selfies will be a community-curated online and an on-campus exhibition of photos documenting people’s memories from the last 50 summers spent around the Chesapeake Bay. The exhibition will incorporate images from CBMM’s own collection, with a majority of the content coming from the community’s submissions over the last year. Submissions are accepted through November 30, 2015 only, with more information at www.cbmmsnapshots.blogspot.com.
A Broad Reach has been generously underwritten by museum donors and 50th anniversary corporate partners, including PNC Financial Services Group, American Cruise Lines, Benson & Mangold, Chesapeake Shipbuilding, Easton Utilities, Fairfield Inn & Suites Easton, Goetze’s Candy, Graul’s Market, Guilford & Company, Hambleton Inn, Higgins & Spencer, Patriot Cruises, Tidewater Inn, and the Vane Brothers Company. CBMM’s 50th anniversary partners include the Academy for Lifelong Learning, St. Michaels Art League, and Christmas in St. Michaels.
“The public’s response to this exhibition has been outstanding,” said CBMM President Kristen Greenaway. “It’s a rare opportunity to see fifty outstanding highlights from our collection, and this winter gives a great opportunity to visit us and take it all in, before we put our white gloves back on and meticulously store them all away. Winter is also the best time to visit the boatyard, as restoration work on our historic fleet of Chesapeake boats ramps up in the cooler months.”
A Broad Reach: 50 Years of Collecting features those objects with the richest stories to tell, from a humble fire axe to a buxom figurehead. Some are arresting, some are transcendent—all explore the Chesapeake and its changing environment and culture over the last 50 years. Some of the objects in A Broad Reach represent bygone Chesapeake trades that have all but disappeared in recent years.
A sailmaker’s bench, representing the art of traditional, hand-crafted sailmaking, is one of those. Oxford, Md. native Downes Curtis learned sailmaking as a youth from the town’s old English sailmaker, David Pritchard. When Pritchard died, his African-American apprentice, Curtis, took over the business. After rescuing most of his tools from a 1943 fire, Curtis moved his shop to the town’s former black schoolhouse, where he continued working until his death in 1996. Curtis built sails for some of the area’s best racing yachtsmen, including a number of log canoe sailors.
Curtis’ tools and equipment remind us of the artisanry and skill developed by maritime craftsmen during the years when spirited recreational sailing competitions on the Chesapeake Bay kept sail lofts humming with sewing machines.
A Broad Reach: 50 Years of Collecting features these stories and more, through rare objects that help us explore the evolving way the Chesapeake Bay continues to define our art, our lives, and our legacy.
A Broad Reach is accompanied by a commemorative catalogue and online exhibition at www.abroadreach.cbmm.org. Both feature images and interpretive text of the 50 objects in the exhibition, many of which were photographed by noted Chesapeake photographer David Harp. Limited-edition catalogues are available for purchase at the Museum store and online at www.shop.cbmm.org, with proceeds benefiting the children and adults served by the museum’s educational programs.
The exhibition is free for CBMM members and with general two-day admission. Situated on 18 waterfront acres with 12 exhibition buildings, the Museum is open daily except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day, or when Talbot County Public Schools are closed due to inclement weather.
Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2015, CBMM is the only museum in the world preserving and exploring the history, environment, and people of the entire Chesapeake Bay. For more information, call 410-745-2916 or visit www.cbmm.org