Peabody Essex Museum

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The Peabody Essex Museum was founded in 1799 as the East India Marine Society by a group of Salem, Massachusetts, based captains and supercargoes. Members of the Society were required by the society's charter to collect "natural and artificial curiosities" from beyond the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. In 1992, the Peabody Museum of Salem merged with the Essex Institute to form the Peabody Essex Museum.

In 2003, the Peabody Essex Museum opened a new wing designed by Moshe Safdie, more than doubling the gallery space to 250,000 square feet (23,000 m²). At this time, the museum also opened to the public the Yin Yu Tang house, an early 19th century Chinese house from Anhui Province that had been removed from its original village and reconstructed in Salem. The current museum Director is Dan Monroe, formerly of the Portland Art Museum.

The museum presently contains significant collections of:

Maritime art
American decorative art
Asian export art
Japanese art
Korean art
Chinese art
Native American art
African art
Indian contemporary art
Phillips Library Collection: rare books, manuscripts & ephemera
Photography: a collection comprising more than a half million rare and vintage images
Architecture: 24 historic American structures and gardens; 5 buildings are National Historic Landmarks; 8 others are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

[edit] Architecture in the Peabody Essex Museum

The museum owns 24 historic structures and gardens. Some are shown in the gallery below. The full set of buildings are: Daniel Bray House, Gilbert Chadwick House, Cotting-Smith Assembly House, Crowninshield-Bentley House, John Tucker Daland House, Derby-Beebe Summer House, East India Marine Hall, Gardner-Pingree House and Gardner-Pingree Carriage House, Lye-Tapley Shoe Shop, Dodge Wing of the Peabody Essex Museum, Asian Export Art Wing of the Peabody Essex Museum, Peirce-Nichols House, Samuel Pickman House, Plummer Hall, Quaker Meeting House, L. H. Rogers Building, Ropes Mansion, Andrew Safford House, Summer School Building, Vilate Young (Kinsman) House, and John Ward House.