Salem, Massachusetts is home to the Peabody Essex Museum. The seaports of Massachusetts were hubs of international trade in the sailing era and merchants and sea captains brought back cultural artifacts from all over the world and especially the orient. The PEM holds a huge collection of oriental art and manufactures. The museum even contains a large 18th century Chinese house that was dismantled, transported and reassembled. The collection also includes hundreds of detailed ship models and other maritime art, plus art and textiles from many other parts of the world. There is also a great kids room where the girls always have fun. This visit they made origami.
I saw an ad for the PEM's current special exhibit, Hats, and it looked like something the girls might like. I had never heard of milliner Stephen Jones but the hats looked fanciful and colorful and cool for kids. The exhibit was very cool. Jones' hats over the past couple of decades were intermixed with vintage hats and artistic hats by other designers.
The highlight for the girls was a section with various naked hats and a bunch of materials like pieces of silk, feathers, belts, etc. from which you could construct your own hat design. We ended up spending quite a bit of time there and each girl created several hats and looks. There was also a computer where visitors could try on virtual copies of several hats from the exhibit and save an portrait.
We also visited the Chinese House, called Yin Yu Tang. The audio tour gave us a vivid picture of what life was like in the house and the times.
Coincidentally we chose the weekend before Halloween to visit the PEM. Over the past decade or so Salem has become a big attraction at Halloween with the streets full of vendors and multiple haunted houses and live music. It was fun to walk through the festive atmosphere. Except we forgot to get fried dough!
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