De Hirsh Margules, Mother Ann Lighthouse, Eastern Point, Gloucester, 1946. Gouache on paper. Gift of Jean M. Horblit, 2002. [Acc. #2002.004.002]
Boston Globe: Cape Ann Museum goes public with capital campaign
By Malcolm Gay, August 5, 2024
After five years of quiet fundraising, the Cape Ann Museum announced Sunday that it has raised $18 million as part of a capital campaign to improve the Gloucester museum’s facilities, enhance programming, and expand its endowment.
Leaders said they hope the fundraising effort, known as the CAM 150 Campaign to coincide with the museum’s 150th anniversary next year, will ultimately raise $20 million. Renovations are set to begin at the downtown campus later this year, with operations shifting to the CAM Green campus in October until the downtown galleries reopen in spring 2026.
Museum director Oliver Barker said the planned improvements will build on the museum’s recent growth, which includes record visitor numbers after last summer’s well-attended exhibition, “Edward Hopper & Cape Ann: Illuminating an American Landscape.”
“It’s very significant,” said Barker.“The Hopper show showed people that we were a serious regional concern and have the ability to mount local exhibitions that have much greater national relevance.”
The planned renovations will focus mainly on the museum’s downtown campus, a collection of buildings that includes an old sea captain’s house dating from 1804. Working with Boston-based designLAB architects, the museum hopes to further unify gallery space across the structures, removing old staircases and updating the HVAC and lighting systems, while also creating a new interactive gallery in an area previously used for collections storage.
“It turns out that we’ve got a lot of unutilized space,” said Barker, who added the renovations will add gallery space while staying within the museum’s existing footprint. “The galleries will look different, but the displays are going to be oriented in a completely different way, too.”
The museum is also planning to update its education center, part of a broader effort to expand its community engagement and educational programs, particularly for K-12 students.
“We’re a cultural center and a gathering place, and we want to ensure that we can realize that commitment,” he said. “We’re only going to be able to do that work if we can amplify our education staff here to ensure that we can live up to that commitment of bringing students here and taking educators out to schools.”
Barker previously oversaw the 2020 opening of CAM Green, a four-acre spread off Route 128 that includes the Janet and William Ellery James Center, a 12,000-square-foot building with gallery space and collections storage facilities.
The museum is now restoring an 18th-century house on the Green campus, where it also plans to add parking spaces and make other improvements. Finally, Barker said, the campaign will increase the museum’s endowment, which currently is valued at around $15 million.
“I’m really keen to see that endowment grow,” he said, adding that roughly half of the money raised so far has come from the museum’s board. “I’m delighted to say that we have 100 percent board participation in the campaign.”
Board chair Henrietta Gates said the museum has changed dramatically in the past decade.
The “Museum has become more accessible, inclusive, and recognized,” Gates, who also serves as the CAM 150 Campaign tri-chair, said in a statement. “From nationally acclaimed exhibits to extensive free programming events celebrating Cape Ann, there is always something to see and do at the Museum.”
Barker said the renovations are part of a broader plan for the museum to start regularly hosting larger loan exhibitions, a bid to re-create some of the magic of last summer’s Hopper show.
Featuring loans from the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., CAM will mount an exhibit in summer 2026 that focuses on the role Cape Ann played in the lives of 20th-century artists Milton Avery, Mark Rothko, and Adolph Gottlieb.
“It’s a model that we first tried in 2019 with the Winslow Homer exhibition,” said Barker, who added the show will later travel to the Phillips Collection in D.C. “I think we perfected it with Hopper, and we hope to do the same again now with Avery, Gottlieb, and Rothko.”
Barker, who launched the campaign soon after his arrival from the Museum of Fine Arts in 2019, recalled that when he first arrived at CAM supporters described it as a “hidden gem.”
“My remit, of course, is to keep that gem-like quality but also make sure that more people know we’re here,” he said. “It all feeds into this idea of taking the ‘hidden’ out of ‘hidden gem.’”
See the original article on Boston Globe’s website.
