Worcester Art Museum

Worcester, Massachusetts
"Wooster" is off most Northeast corridor troopers' regular art itineraries. But for lovers of American painting of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, it is a must stop. All this talk about lemminglike drifts to the sun belt tends to ignore the fact that snow belters have been doing their cultural duties for much longer, and even the collections of a museum like the Worcester illustrate that abundantly.

I'm not implying that the Worcester is moored in some safe past. Far from it. It has a new wing, chock full of the notable painters and sculptors of the recent past. But as an Americanist, I relish continuity, and sometimes prefer century-old classics to ninety-day Wunderkinder. I noticed that to assert its contemporaneity, the museum's Summergarden restaurant had place mats derived from a Frank Stella.

And for four-season visitors, there's a funky old house "Across the Street" (the restaurant's name) with arch menu items like Poisson Poussin--luckily the taste of the fish was untouched, i.e., very good. The Worcester also has a good designer loose in its works, for in its above-average gallery shop there was a fine original scarf which mopped up a big swatch of my Christmas shopping early. WAM, indeed.

And don't forget the sister historical society, a two-minute walk down the street. First of all, it's housed in one of those delectable red, rusticated sandstone houses of the late nineteenth century.

But inside I found a new history of fashion from Puritan to Puckettes, with a marvelous mirror/table set-up where you were inveigled into trying on a historical array of chapeaux that really tickled the kids I watched shopping for personae.

I love this kick in museology where there is at least one hands-on gig to counter the antiseptic "PLEASE DON'T TOUCH" tradition.

--from 20 Museums You've Never Heard Of/Horizon Magazine 1981