De Hirsh Margules, Mother Ann Lighthouse, Eastern Point, Gloucester, 1946. Gouache on paper. Gift of Jean M. Horblit, 2002. [Acc. #2002.004.002]
Gloucester Daily Times: Cape Ann Museum Celebrates its 150th
By Ethan Forman, March 27, 2025
About 35 Cape Ann Museum volunteers, docents, committee and board members, and staff gathered Wednesday morning to hear Director Oliver Barker take a cue from the “Viva San Pietro” chant of St. Peter’s Fiesta to proclaim: “Viva CAM!”
Barker did so during the kickoff to the museum’s yearlong 150th anniversary celebration at the Janet and William Ellery James Center on the CAM Green campus on Poplar Street.
Joining in the celebration with Barker was museum Board of Trustees Chair Henrietta Gates, who helped Barker cut the “CAM-150” birthday cake.
“Good morning everyone and what a glorious gathering of the Cape Ann Museum community of which each and every one of you is an essential part,” Barker said.
“We thought there was no better group than the people that actually make CAM happen,” Barker said. “It’s a collective effort.”
The morning’s event served as the kickoff to a yearlong celebration of the museum’s 150th anniversary, which includes the reopening next spring of the museum’s downtown campus which has been closed since October for renovations to create world-class gallery space, among other improvements, amid an ongoing CAM-150 capital campaign.
The culmination of the 150th festivities will be an exhibition devoted to the work of “a close-knit trio” of artists — Milton Avery, Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko — set to open June 26, 2026, Barker said.
“Today was about acknowledging those people who are here with us today that make CAM what it is as a vibrant community-centric organization,” he said.
Barker said the museum traces its origins to a March 22, 1875, meeting in the residence of Dr. Herman E. Davidson where a society known as the Cape Ann Scientific and Literary Association was established. Its organization was legally completed at meetings held April 17 and Nov. 4, 1875. The Massachusetts Legislature granted a charter on April 22, 1876.
Barker also acknowledged all of those households and countless individuals over the last 150 years that have sustained the museum.
To highlight the vision of the museum’s founders, Barker read out a list of elected officers and directors at the society’s first meeting in 1875 that showed a cross section of the community:
In addition to Davidson, a physician, serving as president, the list included:
John W. Allard, Gloucester superintendent of schools, as first vice president.
Sarah G. Duley, a retired school teacher the first woman to serve on the Gloucester School Committee, as second vice president.
The Rev. Minot G. Gage, a Unitarian minister, as recording secretary.
The Rev. Richard Eddy, a Universalist minister, as corresponding secretary.
Col. David W. Low as treasurer. A land surveyor, town clerk and postmaster who served in the Civil War, Low designed and installed the Gloucester exhibit on maritime industry at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876.
Col. Jonas H. French, president of the Cape Ann Granite Co.
Dr. Edward E. Barden, a Rockport physician.
Gorham P. Low Jr., president of Cape Ann National Bank.
Maria H. Bray, a summer boarding house owner and writer who tended the lights on Thacher Island during a winter storm in 1864.
Henry C. Hallowell, principal of Gloucester’s Collins School.
“It’s pretty exciting, I mean to have such a history and to have come where they were 150 years ago to today,” said Gates, who lives in Hamilton. “So I think the founders would be very proud.
Wednesday’s event took place against the backdrop of the exhibition at CAM Green called “Portrait of a Sculptor: Walker Hancock and Michael Lafferty,” featuring selected sculptures and casts by Hancock, a famous 20th-century sculptor, and Lafferty, who photographed Hancock at work in his Lanesville studio. The exhibit closes Sunday.
To read the full Gloucester Daily Times article, click here.
