Heritage Museums & Gardens Opens for the Season on April 1
Published on Friday, March 19, 2010
Sandwich, Cape Cod, MA (March 19, 2010) – Heritage Museums & Gardens opens to the public Thursday, April 1, with a new exhibit, Art of the Final Farewell: The Gravestones of Cape Cod. Explore the Cape’s fascinating gravestones and stories of the men who carved them. It has been suggested that Cape Cod has a greater variety of gravestone carving styles represented than any other locale in the United States. Visitors to the exhibit can view this amazing variety through photographs and rubbings of the earliest stones of the 1600s and 1700s and learn about the development of a local carving industry in the nineteenth century. The show will be located in the American History Museum and will run through October 31. Visitors can take home their own gravestone art by rubbing reproduction gravestones.
Located on 100 beautiful acres of gardens and nature trails, Heritage Museums & Gardens is completing three new projects that will open in the spring and summer of 2010. The projects include Hidden Hollow: A Nature Discovery Center, a Flume Fountain and major renovations to the Shaker round barn that exhibits the J. K. Lilly III Automobile Collection. The barn is currently under renovation by C. H. Newton Builders, Falmouth, and will have a new entrance, enlarged meeting space, elevator and outdoor patio. It is scheduled to be completed by the end of June. A new exhibit American Speed will open in July
Opening in the spring, the Flume Fountain is a spectacular steel flume conveying a wide ribbon of water from the Heritage entrance ending in a dramatic 26 foot waterfall into a pool in the Don Marvin Daylily Garden. It was designed by Stephen Stimson Associates Landscape Architects of Falmouth.
A new outdoor family attraction, Hidden Hollow, is scheduled to open in early summer. Families can explore the wonders of nature together as they walk the discovery trails, step across wood stumps, build with blocks and sticks, create nature-inspired art, play music on outdoor instruments, dance on the stage and engage in scientific investigation. These new projects enhance the current offerings of the museum which include a world class automobile collection; The Gravestones of Cape Cod; a semi-permanent exhibit A Bird in the Hand, the Carvings of Elmer and Cleon Crowell; and Marching Miniatures, with objects from the museum’s military collection all located in the American History Museum. The Art Museum has a working antique carousel, an extraordinary collection of New England folk art – paintings, weathervanes, Nantucket baskets, scrimshaw and more and a new exhibit The Art of Frank Vining Smith, featuring marine paintings, which is scheduled to open June 25. There is also a labyrinth, Old East Mill, Hart Family Maze Garden, Blossoms Café by Nibbles-n-Sips, and a Museum Store on the grounds. The gardens will soon be bursting with daffodils, rhododendrons, hydrangeas, daylilies, hostas, azaleas, annuals and perennials. There’s always something in bloom at Heritage Museums & Gardens!