News and Events for Nantucket Island
Susan and Howard Bloom have announced the Adam Bloom Scholarship Fund for children interested in attending the Maria Mitchell Association’s winter and spring vacation camp programs running in December and April. Applications, available at mariamitchell.org, are being accepted for the MMA’s Winter Discovery Camp from December 27 to 30. During […]
~ by Katherine Brooks, Maria Mitchell Association ~ The story of the striped bass skeleton hanging in the Maria Mitchell Association’s Hinchman Natural Science Museum begins with an old Nantucketer, Granger Frost, who caught the striped bass off of Tuckernuck in 1971. The bass, lovingly named the 7th Earl of […]
Legends Paul Winter and Roger Payne Perform “Whales Alive: The Music of Whales” Concert at the Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street on Wednesday, August 31 at 7 pm. Winter is a saxophonist, composer, and seven-time Grammy winner. Dr. Payne is the biologist famous for the discovery of humpback whale songs […]
~ by Katherine Brooks, Maria Mitchell Association ~ Sundial or Sun d’Isle, as so cleverly named and crafted by Robert A. diCurcio (Bob), was designed as a piece of functional art and commissioned for the Maria Mitchell Association in 1989. The sundial is designed based on the latitude (41 degrees, […]
The Maria Mitchell Association (MMA) biological collections’ oldest specimen is the Wood Fern (pictured above). Maria Louisa Owen, an expert in mosses and moss-like plants, collected this fern in 1879. This was during the height of “Pteridomania” – also known as the Victo- rian fern craze – which was sweeping […]
~ by Katherine Brooks, Maria Mitchell Association ~ Fangs. The photo to the right is a close up of a tarantula – or a purseweb spider – hiding out in its tubular home, and giving the camera a toothy grin. Nantucket is home to a few unusual spiders, including tarantulas, […]
by Amy Jenness Maria Mitchell spent the first 11 years of her adulthood living a quiet life on Nantucket, first as a teacher and then as librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum. But that changed on a clear October night in 1847 when she saw a comet through her telescope and […]
~ by Katherine Brooks, Maria Mitchell Association ~ Among the historic gray-shingled houses of Vestal Street and hidden in the gardens of the Maria Mitchell Association’s Hinchman House Natural Science Museum, sits a whale skull found thirty years ago at Cisco Beach. The bone belongs to a right whale: an […]
~ by Katherine Brooks, Maria Mitchell Association ~ The story of the orphan tropical fish sounds like it could be the nautical version of “Annie,” or a spin off of “Finding Dory,” but the story of the orphan tropical fish hinges on the theme of displacement and is an example […]
