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Concord Museum
3 reviews for Concord Museum
This is a pretty decent museum for being as small as it is. That being said, the price of $10 per person is a little steep. There are lots of great artifacts in the lower level: clothing, weapons, deeds for property, arrowheads, etc, all from colonial times. The lower level leads you through a somewhat chronological history of the Concord area, starting with the Native Americans and taking you through all the famous authors who hung out in Concord. There is a video they show every 30 minutes or so, but the video is pretty antiquated, with pretty much every person in it dressed in disco outfits (a la 1975).
So why only three stars? Well, the parking lot is a little difficult to access. It has no sign to direct you in from Rte 2, and you'll end up zipping right by, turning right on Lexington Rd, and seeing a parking lot you can't reach. The wallpaper in the restrooms are peeling off the walls.... a little creepy... made me think that water splooshes out of the toilet onto the walls frequently enough to un-gum the wallpaper. Finally, the short-haired lady at the front totally wanted to bone some Canadian tourist, so she sat there and talked with him for a good ten minutes, all the while ignoring my mother and I as we stood there patiently waiting... and waiting. Then, when we wanted to ask her a question, she was in another conversation with the same gentleman... So we waited again. Pretty rude, especially for the first point of contact at the Concord Museum.
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No great art here, but plenty of medium-sized chunks of our American consciousness. The Concord Museum owns the contents of Emerson's study, the world's largest collection of Thoreau's possessions, rooms full of highboys and lowboys and windsor chairs that look as if they once sat in a spinster's parlor, and some relics of the Revolution, including the "one if by land, and two if by sea" lantern. Incessant ringing of cell phones aside, the Concord Museum is hardly touched by modernity and one leaves with the impression that nothing of note happened in Concord since the Transcendentalists transcended mortality. And that's OK, too.
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I grew up on the North Shore, then rounded out my grammar schooling down on the Cape, and was completely indoctrinated first by Pilgrims then by Salem Witches, then by whaling and cursory ocean zoology - really wallowed around in material about the creatures of the tide pools, jellyfish, crabs and lobsters, eels, and I could voice over National Geographic footage of goosefish. The battle of Concord, Paul Revere, the North Bridge, and Louisa May Alcott got passing mention, but they didn't directly involve our 'hood, so they weren't as deeply probed.
So needless to say, I've never set foot in the Concord Museum proper, as best I can figure, because I am hometown proud. I do understand they have neat stuff I probably don't know as much as I should about. However I am on my way as soon as my fingers leave the keyboard to the Concord Museum sponsored Garden Tour today, for which I must show some love. I have done this for the last 2 years and it's great to see how hardworking and devoted some home gardeners are - there's this one octogenarian's house on the tour that brings tears to the eye. Alternately, I savor walking into a yard full of what I know to be pricey plants mail ordered from Washington and Oregon to fulfill some Asian Zen Jungle fantasy, the owner elaborates on the complexity and challenges of creating it, and I still think it's the tackiest looking thing I've ever seen, plus those Petasites he's pointing at are an invasive species. So thank you, Concord Museum. Maybe I'll eventually go further than the gift shop where I buy my garden tour ticket.