Mystic Seaport Museum

Visitor experience - Mystic Seaport Museum welcomes 250,000 visitors annually. Departments including visitor services, exhibitions, interpretation, and public programs welcome visitors; research, design, produce, and care for exhibits; offer educational and illustrative experiences about america and the sea; and offer a variety of seasonal and themed programs, activities, and special events.

Collections & research - Mystic Seaport Museum's collection contains more than 2 million items spanning the eighteenth through twenty-first centuries, including watercraft, historic buildings, photographs and film, art, tools, and artifacts. The watercraft collection is the largest in the world with more than 560 vessels, including four national historic landmarks. The henry b. dupont preservation shipyard cares for these vessels, while the curatorial department acquires, researches, documents, restores, and conserves items for the collection. The Museum's collection are housed in a state of the art facility, the collections research center, which serves students, members, staff, and outside scholars.the Museum's collection includes 560 watercraft (including 5 major vessels), 24 historic houses and buildings, 2000 ship models, 1100 scrimshaw pieces, 5000 video tapes, 1,500,000 feet of historic film and a collection of more than 1,000,000 photographs, as well as significant collections of prints, navigational instruments, tools, marine paintings and other maritime memorabilia. In addition, the collection contains large quantities of nonnautical furnishings for the historic buildings, as well as ship and boat parts, engines, and similar objects. The Museum's library collection contains approximately 75,000 books and periodicals, 1,000,000 manuscripts, 10,000 maps, well over 100,000 ship plans, 2,000 rolls of microfilm, and 600 oral history tapes.

Educational programs - Mystic Seaport Museum serves 25,000 students and teachers annually with a variety of educational opportunities, including summer camps; sailing programs; school field trips; and afterschool, in-school, homeschool, virtual, and overnight programs.