Chicago Maritime Museum Debuts Two Temporary Exhibits

The Chicago Maritime Museum was thrilled to welcome visitors into our gallery on Thursday, February 22nd for the opening of our two new temporary exhibitions: The Trail That Leaves No Trace featuring the museum's canoe collection and The Philip R. May Collection which celebrates CMM's recent acquisitions.

Visitors were able to explore the exhibition with curator Madeline Crispell who led the group on a tour and discussed the objects on view. In the library, visitors can watch a segment of Director James Forni's documentary Mr. Canoe and see a sixteen-foot Peterborough canoe that came to the museum from Ralph Frese's own collection hanging from the ceiling.
In the South Gallery, you can explore more than a dozen objects collected by Philip R. May and his family, including naval memorabilia, nautical tools and instruments, and works of art.

Hung alongside the five possible Needham paintings covered in last month's newsletter is an 1898 painting of Goose Island by the French impressionist artist Albert Fleury that was donated to CMM by the M. Christine Schwartz Collection last summer and which is on view at the museum for the first time.

The Philip R. May Collection will be on view through April 19th and The Trail That Leaves no Trace will be on view through the end of this year. If you're interested in scheduling a curator-led or docent-led tour of the museum and exhibitions, you can reserve one here.
 
In the meantime, to learn more about the exhibitions from home, you can explore local coverage of the shows: