Heritage Collection

2025 Heritage Highlights Did you know that the Heritage Museums & Gardens stewards a collection of over 18,000 objects? Containing everything from vintage cars to folk art paintings, this eclectic ensemble is the result of decades of collecting by our founders, Josephine and Josiah Kirby Lilly III. Encompassing what [...]

Women Artists of Impressionist New England By Amanda Wastrom, Curator Some of the most rewarding discoveries I had while researching the Impressionist New England exhibition were all the new artist friends I met. Despite the fact that most of them are now deceased, the research process often feels like [...]

Cape Cod Artists of Impressionist New England By Amanda Wastrom, Curator Cape Cod has inspired painters for generations now. In the story of American Impressionism, this region plays a major role, mainly thanks to the Provincetown Art Colony. Around the early 1900s, Provincetown was a major summer destination for [...]

2024 Heritage Highlights Exhibit: John Baxter's Pocket Watch Trade Sign By Sarah Sherman Clark, Registrar/Collections Manager For centuries, businesses have used signs to advertise their trades, services, and goods. Because large portions of populations throughout history could not read, it was common to use the universal languages of illustrations, [...]

Impressionist New England: Four Seasons of Color and Light By Amanda Wastrom, Curator Impressionism was my first art love. I grew up in New Hampshire, only about an hour north of Boston. My mother, a teacher and an art lover, would take me to museums in the city all [...]

2024 Heritage Highlights Exhibit: Featuring Items Important to Cape Codders By Jennifer Madden, Director of Collections & Exhibitions Recently many visitors to Heritage have been saying the same thing – they want to hear more local stories. We listened! This season the Heritage Highlights exhibit in the Art and [...]

The America II Model Ship By Amanda Wastrom, Curator Every exhibit needs a showstopper. That attention-grabbing thing that stops visitors in their tracks and (ideally) inspires gasps of awe and astonishment. That’s the dream of every curator after all: lots of pointing, closer looking, and exclamations of wow! and [...]

Taylor Jones: Presidential Caricaturist By Jennifer Madden, Director of Collections & Exhibitions The biting art of caricature has been around for hundreds of years, and who makes a better target than politicians? With Presidents’ Day nearly upon us, it’s worth another look at Heritage’s collection of presidential cartoons by [...]