What's New this Summer at the Nichols House Museum? Upcoming Events and More

Letter from the Director

It’s great to be open for tours again this summer and to welcome visitors through the doors of 55 Mount Vernon Street on a regular basis. We’re experimenting with tour hours and will continue to add tours to the schedule and to offer them at a variety of times, so check the website often for up-to-date availability. We also welcome opportunities to schedule private individual or group tours – just reach out and we’ll be happy to accommodate you.

If you’re in the neighborhood, stop by the front garden space of the Museum and enjoy a quiet moment. Although the large horse chestnut tree that inhabited that space when the Nichols family was in residence is no longer there, a beautiful red maple offers some welcome shade.

Before Mastlands was purchased--the Nichols’ summer home located in Cornish, NH

--the family escaped the summer heat through trips to Rye Beach where Dr. Nichols had a summer practice. In Lively Days: Some Memoirs, Margaret Nichols Shurcliff describes arriving in Rye Beach by stagecoach after a train journey to North Hampton, NH: “There we got our first view of the ocean and eagerly scanned the horizon to find the Isles of Shoals, ten miles out to see…we sniffed the salty air and caught the pungent smell of seaweed thrown up on the beach during the last storm. After the heat of the city, there is nothing so exhilarating as the first long draught of cool salty air.”

Wishing you many peaceful moments in gardens, on mountains, or at the shore this summer.

Upcoming Programs

Virtual Book Talk with Kellie Carter Jackson

July 13th, 2021

6:00PM

Free for members

Explore the first historical analysis exclusively focused on the tactical use of violence among antebellum black activists. Go beyond the honorable politics of moral suasion and the romanticism of the Underground Railroad and into an exploration of the agonizing decisions, strategies, and actions of the black abolitionists who were responsible for instigating monumental social and political change.

Nichols House Museum is a co-sponsor of this event hosted by the Boston Athenaeum.

Hidden Spaces of the Nichols House Museum

Various dates and times starting August 26th

Explore the Nichols House Museum from behind-the-scenes. What did it take to make the house run in the Victorian era? How do staff manage its preservation today? Peek into rooms and spaces not usually on view, take the back stairs, and explore over 200 years of this old house’s secrets.

Staff Updates

We’re thrilled to welcome Claire Senatore as the Museum’s new Collections Manager. Claire has a Masters in Museum Studies from Harvard University Extension School. She brings extensive collections care, collections cataloguing/inventorying, and art handling experience to NHM through positions held at Hingham Historical Society, Harvard Art Museums, Historic New England, and Clark Fine Art Services, as well as internships at the Bostonian Society and the Shirley-Eustis House. Claire will be working at the Museum on a part-time basis.

We are pleased to host Kayli Rideout as the Nichols House Museum Julie Linsdell and Georgia Linsdell Enders Research Fellow. Kayli is a Ph.D. student in American & New England Studies at Boston University. Her research interests are centered around American decorative arts of the late-nineteenth century, specifically silver and glass. She has held internships and research fellowships at such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the New-York Historical Society, and the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. At the Nichols House Museum, Kayli will focus on the silver collection as objects of a multi-generational family living through periods of rapid social, political, and cultural change.

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