Open daily: 9:00 am – 3:30 pm.
The last entrance is at 2:45 pm.
The Museum and Grounds close sharply at 3:30 pm.
Open daily: 9:00 am – 3:30 pm.
The last entrance is at 2:45 pm.
The Museum and Grounds close sharply at 3:30 pm.
Open daily: 9:00 am – 3:30 pm.
The last entrance is at 2:45 pm.
The Museum and Grounds close sharply at 3:30 pm.
Open daily: 9:00 am – 3:30 pm.
The last entrance is at 2:45 pm.
The Museum and Grounds close sharply at 3:30 pm.
Join us for the fourth annual Eric Pape Fine Art Exhibition, a rare fantasy art and illustration exhibit in Massachusetts featuring over 100 pen and ink works by Eric Pape (1870–1938), a Golden Age illustrator with ties to Boston and the North Shore.
Many of these original illustrations were recovered from Pape’s locked studio decades after his death and are being publicly exhibited for the first time in over a century. The exhibition includes works created for classic literary titles such as The Arabian Nights, Tales of Wonder and Magnificence, Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Andersen, Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, works by William Shakespeare, and The Heart of a Child by Gertrude Slaughter.
This year’s exhibition features 73 works on loan from renowned conflict photographer Bruce Haley. Recently cleaned and conserved, these pieces have not been publicly displayed since Pape died in 1938 and are drawn from Haley’s private collection in Northern California. Additional works are on loan from the world’s leading Pape biographer and collector, Dr. Gregory Conn, whose collection has been exhibited internationally, including at the Queen Christina House Museum and Museum Kloster in Zeven, Germany. Lynne Ponte also contributes to the exhibit.
This immersive exhibition combines detailed fantasy illustrations, literary storytelling, and the historic setting of the Museum to create a unique cultural experience in New England. Admission includes access to the temporary exhibition as well as a self-guided tour of the Museum. Visitors can also view the only known surviving Eric Pape mural on permanent display in the Dr. Gregory Conn and Dr. Sagrario Ortega Room.
9:00 am – 3:30 pm, and the last admittance is at 2:45 pm.
Admission to the exhibition and Self-Guided Tours:
Please note: The Invention Room and Natalie Room will be closed to the public during this exhibition as we prepare to open our two new temporary exhibits: Inside the Faraday Cage: “The Science of Things That Aren’t So” and “A Tale of Two Pianos: (Invention Room feature), both of which will open on Saturday, May 2nd.
This year’s exhibition will feature 73 works on loan from renowned conflict zone photographer Bruce Haley. These pieces have recently been cleaned and conserved and have not been publicly exhibited since Eric Pape’s death in 1938.
The artwork is primarily on loan from the private collection from renowned conflict zone photographer Bruce Haley. A number of pieces will be from the private collection of avid Pape collector and biographer Dr. Gregory Conn, one of the world’s leading experts on the 20th-century artist. Click Here To Learn More About Pape.
During your visit, you will also be able to view The Wireless Naval Battle of Gloucester Bay, the only surviving mural by the famed artist. The mural was designed as a gift for John Hays Hammond Jr., the inventor and Museum’s founder. Installed and on permanent display in what is now the Lower Den exhibit room, this oil painting depicts a fictitious battle in Gloucester Bay. Pape based the scene on his own experiences with Hammond and was heavily influenced by Hammond’s work for the military. The naval battle scene includes Hammond’s own radio towers, which he erected on the bay shore, as well as the searchlight that Hammond installed for light-controlled, guided vessels.
The restoration work on the twenty-two-foot-long by two-foot, ten-inch-wide mural was generously sponsored by Dr. Conn and his wife, Dr. Sagrario Ortega. The project was completed in 2020.
In the early 1990s Dr. Conn added to his art collection a life-size pastel portrait drawn by Eric Pape of Miss Alice Beers, daughter of insurance company robber baron William H. Beers, Esq. Finding only fragmentary information about the once-prominent artist Eric Pape available at the time, Dr. Conn began a decades-long study of the man and his art.
Piqued by the tragic story and curious personalities he uncovered while researching the “Locked Studio” of Eric Pape and its hidden contents, Dr. Conn eventually amassed the largest extant collection of the surviving art of Eric Pape. He has undertaken the task of restoring and conserving the many Pape artworks he recovered, and has been donating them to public institutions worldwide for the appreciation of future generations.
Dr. Conn is also the author of the biography “Eric Pape, Master of the Pageant,” in Illustration magazine #53, 2016, published by The Illustrated Press, and Eric Pape, eine Wiederentdeckung (a Rediscovery), which details the first comprehensive retrospective exhibition of Eric Pape art in a century. It was held at the Museum Kloster and Queen Cristina House Museums in Zeven, Germany, the town from which Eric Pape’s family emigrated to the United States. The exhibition was sponsored by Dr. Conn and included over sixty pieces of art from his collection that had not been seen publicly since the artist’s death.
Dr. Conn is also author of “Eric Pape and The Players”, a biography and catalog for the 2022 exhibition of works by Eric Pape for the theater at The Players in Manhattan. Dr. Conn is, like the famous subject of this site, a member of The Players.
Dr. Conn´s most recent book “Eric Pape in the New York Herald Tribune” collects material on Eric Pape´s work as a portrait artist throughout his career, including all 154 celebrity portraits drawn by Eric Pape for the Tribune during the Great Depression.
Bruce Haley (b. 1957) is an award-winning photographer with nearly 40 years of experience covering war and its aftermath, along with a host of various long-term documentary projects. Self-taught, he is the recipient of the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his coverage of Burma’s bloody ethnic civil war. With a military and police background, Haley began his career in 1988, covering Afghanistan’s mujahideen resistance to Soviet occupation; shortly thereafter, the legendary Howard Chapnick accepted Haley into Black Star, one of the industry’s premier photo agencies. Bruce graciously lent 73 pieces of newly restored art by Eric Pape for this exhibition at Hammond Castle Museum.
Haley photographed areas of conflict in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. His images from Burma of a grisly execution by stabbing shocked the world and engendered much controversy and discussion. He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by the Baltimore Sun in 1992 for helping to break the story of the famine in Somalia. Over the course of his career, Haley has expanded his subject matter well beyond the battlefield – working across multiple camera formats, he has explored topics as diverse as the Bolivian altiplano, Eastern Europe’s persecuted Roma (Gypsies), the decaying infrastructure of Soviet-era industry, and the timber and extractive industries in the American West.
Haley’s photographs have appeared in books, magazines, and newspapers worldwide, as well as in publications and on CD, video, and DVD covers; his clients include Time, Life, U.S. News and World Report, The London Sunday Times Magazine, Stern, Paris Match, GEO, Aperture, Esquire, Georgia-Pacific, and the Chevron Corporation. Numerous magazines and newspapers have profiled Haley and his work, among them American Photo, (French) PHOTO, The New Yorker, the New York Times, B&W, UTNE Reader, The Telegraph (UK), Photo District News, ARTWORKS, and ARTS & LIVING. His limited-edition portfolio, entitled 13 Million Tons of Pig Iron, was #1 on the Photo-Eye Best Seller List. In addition to publications, Haley’s exhibition prints have been shown in museums and galleries all over the world. There are currently four monographs of Haley’s work in print: Sunder (2010), Home Fires Volume I (2020), Home Fires Volume II (2021), and Winter (2023).
