South Street Seaport Museum releases the next set of collections artifacts for digital visitors to browse, research, and enjoy for free. In March 2021, the Museum launched a Collections Online Portal, which today features over 3,500 pieces on virtual display, allowing audiences to explore New York City’s past through the archives, artifacts, and photographs of the South Street Seaport Museum.
This new iteration includes 150 paintings and 225 newspaper clippings covering a variety of historical subjects and themes relating to the growth of New York City as a world port. Taken together, they offer a vibrant picture of the history of New York City as a port city, where international trade routes, global cultures, and seafaring, including all aspects of life, art, and work associated with them, come together in the heyday of the rise of New York as a global capital. Now available, the digital galleries can be viewed, at no cost. seaportmuseum.org/collectionsonline.
The new sets of digital galleries include:
Paintings Highlights (150 items)
The South Street Seaport Museum’s collection of paintings includes a vast variety of works, many by renowned marine painters of the 19th and 20th century, including James E. Buttersworth (1817–1894), Gordon Grant (1875–1962), Antonio N.G. Jacobsen (1850–1921) and Samuel Walters (1811–1882). The paintings depict seascapes, harbor views, ships, and captain and merchant portraits. The collection focuses on 19th and 20th century oil paintings that illustrate the importance of international commerce in New York Harbor during the “Golden Age of Sail.”
Highlights of the Museum’s rich painting collection include the work of Danish/American artist Antonio N.G. Jacobsen (1850–1921) who was a prolific artist and is believed to have painted around 6,000 works throughout his life. His works include sketches and works focusing on the Battery, and commissions by ship owners to paint commemorative works of their boats, including steamship companies such as The Old Dominion, The Fall River Line, and The White Star Line.
Newspaper Clippings Highlights (225 items)
Whether it is a small clipping illustrating a ship or describing a marriage announcement—or the entire front page of a newspaper reporting the winner of a presidential election or the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge—people and museums collect newspapers and clippings.
The South Street Seaport Museum’s newspaper clipping collection consists of front pages and full-pages relating to the history of New York City and New York State from the mid-19th century to mid-20th century. Of the over 1,400 items in this specific collection, the Museum selected 225 clippings that include coverage of ship construction, launchings and disasters at sea, eyewitness accounts of social transformation such as illustration and commentary to the editor on topics ranging from the transatlantic voyages and vivid details of how our ancestors lived and died, as well as many impactful engravings and advertisements.
To learn more about this collection’s inventory and digitization check out the Museum’s Collections Chronicles latest blog post where you can learn more about the challenges and rewards of this and many other exciting collection management projects at seaportmuseum.org/blog.
The South Street Seaport Museum’s collections consist of nearly 26,000 works of art and artifacts and over 55,000 historic records documenting the rise of New York as a port city, and its role in the development of the economy and business of the United States through social and architectural landscapes. The Museum’s collections trace the history of New York City’s Harbor and Port, from the East River piers and the waterfront areas of Manhattan, to the city’s other boroughs and the New Jersey shoreline. The Museum also documents and interprets New York international trade routes, global cultures, and seafaring, including all aspects of life, art, and work associated with them.
These new digital galleries join previously released highlights of: architecture elements, broadsides, ceramics, clipper cards, Conza Howell silhouettes, drawings and watercolors, Fairchild Aerial Surveys Inc. photographs, George P. Hall photographs, illustrations from D.T. Valentine’s Manual of the Corporation for the City of New York, lithographs and prints, nautical instruments, ocean liner ephemera, patterns for casting, printing presses, ship models, ship parts and gear, stereographs, Thomas W. Kennedy photographs, US Customs House photographs, and the Wendell Lorang Collection of maritime postcards.
