Nantucket Nightmare 'til April 20
Nantucket Nightmare, on exhibit till April 20 in the Nantucket Historical Association’s Whitney Gallery, 7 Fair Street, is a collection of original editorial cartoons from the 1970s by Richard C. Maloney. The cartoons provide satirical social commentary on Nantucket’s burgeoning development issues—from housing and automobiles to new buildings and tourism. In an amusing and provocative way, many of his cartoons still have a strong resonance today as the island continues to confront the problems that were beginning to appear in the early 1970s.
A 1926 graduate of Dartmouth College, Maloney served as lieutenant commander in the U. S. Navy during the Second World War. A former professor and assistant dean at Penn State, he retired to Nantucket in 1970 and created this series of cartoons, which appeared in the Inquirer and Mirror under the signature “Atropos” (one of the three sister Fates in Greek mythology).
The Whitney Gallery is located in the NHA Research Library on Fair Street, and is open Monday, Thursday, and Friday, 10 am – 4 pm and Tuesday, 11 am – 4 pm.
Through April 22 the Nantucket Whaling Museum will be open Friday through Sunday from 11 a.m.– 4 p.m. Spring hours begin on April 26, when the museum will be open Thursday – Monday from 11 am to 4 pm. The museum’s current exhibition, Recent Acquisitions, is on display in the Peter Foulger Gallery, and the museum proper features the film, Bones of History, the Whale Hunt Object Theater, the whaleship Essex Gam, and various gallery tours; exhibits about Nantucket history, decorative arts, scrimshaw, and numerous interactive hands-on learning opportunities for children 12 and under. The museum also includes a restored 1847 candle factory —with its original whale-oil beam press (a three-story wooden structure that is the only such artifact surviving anywhere in the world); a 47-foot sperm-whale skeleton; a fully rigged whaleboat; a vast collection of whaling tools; the16-foot Fresnel lens from Sankaty lighthouse; and numerous portraits of whaling captains and their wives.
