Touching Images That Display an Artist's Own "Natural Histories" at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem
NOTE : This exhibition ended on May 27th, 2013 The East India Marine Hall at the Peabody Essex Museum Last Thursday evening I was invited to attend a Press Preview Event for the latest exhibition in the Year of Photography at PEM in Salem, Massachusetts. Those of you who have been around the blog a bit know that the PEM is the Peabody Essex Museum - a wonderful place whose roots date to the 1799 founding of the East India Marine Society, an organization of Salem captains and supercargoes who had sailed beyond either the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn and brought back items to fulfill the society’s charter provision for the establishment of a “cabinet of natural and artificial curiosities" - or as we know it - a museum. Those sea captains and supercargoes did both residents and any visitors to the city of Salem a major favor as the PEM is truly one of the North Shore's biggest jewels among the many that it can lay claim to and with new exhibits opening all the time, ...