The past twelve months have been busy, with many events produced and many visitors to the Museum, and a successful effort to elevate public awareness of the Museum.

​

As we entered the key bicentennial year, your board of directors engaged in a strategic planning process aimed at a re-appraisal of the Museum’s value to the town, its members, its visitors, and the

larger public. The result is a re-imagined approach to programs and governance.

 

We are committed to telling the story of banker and store proprietor Abigail Hooper, who, 200 years ago, was the only unmarried, self-made woman in Massachusetts to have her own house built—the house that would become your Museum and that deserves special attention in this bicentennial. In so doing, we sponsored two lectures about her life and we completed the restoration of three rooms to interpret her domestic and retail activities in a room-by-room narrative for visitors.

 

In appealing to families and children, we are introducing two new permanent exhibits, a Talking Dollhouse and Downtown 1910 Diorama with Model Trains, and we have sponsored several family-friendly events as well as hosted field trips from elementary school pupils. We have renewed the Salt Cod Fishyard as a permanent outdoor exhibit, and we brought The Torrent fire engine and the Forster Flag into the street for the Fourth of July parade.

​

​In recognition of the importance of art to this town, we produced four Art Shows and acquired works by the Cheever family of photographers and by the master painter Charles S. Hopkinson, whose art is now on display in our newly transformed gallery space.

 

Thanks to you, we had a record-setting Annual Appeal. We held a Bicentennial Inaugural event at Sharksmouth and have begun a Capital Campaign in support of programs and of further restoration efforts, such as the re-creation of the handsome portico that graced the front of the house in the days of Abigail Hooper and her husband Capt. Richard Trask. We envision the restored portico serving as both a literal and symbolic portal welcoming visitors to new experiences.

​

We have benefited from the generosity of several donors of items and artifacts, including Sue Parker, Randolph Carr, Melanie Andrews, Kitty Weaver, Lotte Calnek, Sarah Dixwell Brown, Matthew Swindell, Donald Carleton and Robert Booth, Elizabeth Trask Camacho, Laura Denoncour, Matthew Genta, Mary Maynard, Cheryl Lee Lamphear, Marjorie Barnett, John Davis, and Pamela Nelson. We have also received loans from Malcolm Odell, Matthew Genta, and Jean-Marc de Wasseige.

​

Not least, we were the beneficiaries of the remarkable graphic talents of Melanie Andrews and of the expertise of attorney John Colucci, both of whom generously provided their services pro bono.

​

Thanks to all!