Curatorial Acquisitions

Collecting important artifacts for the benefit of the public
The Museum is always collecting objects to help us tell the story of the Chesapeake Bay. To compete in today’s collecting market, museums must spend money to acquire artifacts. Securing the funds necessary to purchase such significant acquisitions is critical.
A recent acquisition of nearly 900 rare and antique oyster cans, advertising signs, and other seafood marketing objects, gives the Museum the largest and most valuable collection of tidewater seafood industry artifacts anywhere.

Of the hundreds of items, nearly 600 are metal containers ranging in capacity from eight ounces to five gallons. Seafood packers on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay filled the containers with raw oysters and shipped the popular bivalve around the world.

Half the oyster tins in the collection were made prior to World War II, and most came from the commercial seafood packing centers of Baltimore, Crisfield, and Cambridge in Maryland and Norfolk and Chincoteague in Virginia. In addition to the tins, the Museum also acquired numerous wooden shipping crates, advertising signs and clocks, tokens, playing cards, paperweights, can openers, post cards, sheet music, and licenses, all linked to the oyster trade.

“The importance of this collection to the Museum is hard to overstate,” according to Curator Pete Lesher. “The collection’s value goes beyond exhibitions—it will be invaluable to historians looking for clues to the existence, location, products, and dates of operations of early business enterprises.”

1. "At Play on the Bay" Exhibit
2. Historic Vessel Program Endowment & Skipjack Restoration Project
3. Marine Railway Upgrade
4. Information Technology
5. Old Point Restoration
6. Curatorial Acquisitions
7. Rosie Parks Restoration
8. Boat Shop Renovation
9. Chesapeake Encounters
10. Steamboat Building Expansion

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