Lynn Museum / LynnArts
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Images
Lynn Museum (image from Boston Central)
Industry and Craft Exhibit (image from Lynn Museum/LynnArts)
1829 map of Lynn and Saugus (image from the Library of Congress)
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
Lynn Museum and Historical Society
The Lynn Historical Society was established in 1897 in order to preserve the city's colonial heritage. The collections of the group eventually were exhibited in a residential building on Green Street. The Lynn Museum today is located in the former Heritage State Park Visitor Center, with an archive and photography collection as well as approximately 10,000 other objects including furniture, fine art, textiles, and personal objects. Exhibits focus on manufacturing and industry, labor and women's rights, abolitionism, and changes in Lynn from its Colonial beginnings to its citizens' contributions to the Second World War. The Lynn Museum and LynnArts, housed in an adjacent former bank building, merged in 2014. LynnArts, a cultural center, offers programs and studio space for visual and performance artists (1).
The museum offers rotating exhibits, as well as a number of permanent fixtures. The Industry and Craft exhibit highlights Lynn's shoe manufacturing and General Electric history; Collecting for the Artifacts of Lynn focuses on the history of the museum itself, on museum science and historic preservation, and on "collecting to preserve the history of social movements"; Focus/Flash is a seasonal display from the photography collection; Postcards of Lynn displays the culture and architecture of the city through historic postcards; the online exhibit, Lynn Legacies, highlights historic individuals, groups, events, and social movements; and Welcome to the Lynn Theatre! exhibits photographs and ephemera from the city's historic theatres (1).Sources
2. Massachusetts Department of
Housing and Community Development. "Brief History of Lynn." City of
Lynn. Accessed August 11, 2018. http://www.ci.lynn.ma.us/aboutlynn_history.shtml.