Captain Avery Museum Essay

Type of Site/Event The Captain Avery Museum is a two story wooden house set on the banks of the West River in Shady Side Maryland. This current museum was once a small home; develop to a family vacation spot, and now its current use as a museum. The Captain Salem Avery House reflects the impact of the Chesapeake Bay on everyone from watermen to families seeking an escape to a small town. The purpose of the Museum is to collect, preserve and share local Chesapeake history by celebrating the culture around the Bay — past, present and future - through oral histories, collections, exhibitions, and community activities. The museum conveys a wide variety of educational opportunities. Tours at the museum can encompass cultural history of the Shady Side area, hands-on baking in their kitchen,

During week two of this course, we discussed the visual arts “Today we often think of art as precious things on display in a museum. However, that was not always the case, and the visual arts include more than just painting and sculpture. Architecturally crafted and designed objects—articles of daily use—are may be considered art.” The entire property of the museum was a piece of visual art from the waterfront property to the RainScape garden, the unique historical artifacts and preservation of the land. During week four we learned about literature and this museum had its own library. The Captain Avery Museum’s library contains a sizeable collection of printed materials, newspaper clippings, oral histories and photographs relating to Shady Side, its surrounding communities and the Chesapeake Bay. Topics include the families, businesses, churches, buildings and history of the area; the watermen of the West River and the Chesapeake, the Avery family and the home of Salem Avery, and the history of the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society, the founding organization of the Captain Avery