Open Winter 2022
Salem Confidential
Curator Elaine von Bruns has assembled an astonishing exhibition of the Salem Athenaeum’s seldom-seen art and books that tell surprising stories about Salem people.
The tantalizing tidbits and tales within must be seen to be believed!
- Early prints (1883) of the artists, Frank W. Benson and Joseph Lindon Smith
- Pamphlets written by a Salem-born author with a famous name promoting a fraudulent investing scam in the 1910s
- A literary hoax about witchcraft which was a best-seller in the 1840s
- Rare 1830 pamphlet about the murder of Capt. White and the sensational trial.
- Hawthorne’s signature on a Custom House document
- Sheet music for The Wreck of Hesperus, a cantata based on Longfellow’s poem and set off the coast of Gloucester.
- Sheet music for Puritania, an opera about a Salem girl accused of witchcraft.
- Rare books by Salem abolitionists