The Boston Museum is a planned history museum for the city of Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

. The Museum will bring the region's 400-year history into focus, inspiring local residents and visitors from across the globe to explore Boston’s rich heritage, historic sites and cultural attractions. A 100000 square feet (9,290.3 m²) museum and marketplace concept is now in active development, with additional plans for a low-lying pedestrian bridge to serve as a gateway to the museum and a critical connector of park parcels along the Rose Kennedy Greenway. It will be located in the heart of downtown Boston, adjacent to the Rose Kennedy Greenway and the Freedom Trail, and located near to Faneuil Hall Marketplace. The Boston Museum will collaborate and develop partnerships with schools, universities, libraries, museums, research institutes, and civic organizations. The museum promises to be a forum, a gateway for extending value to the community.

The planned building will be designed by Cambridge Seven Associates. The proposal includes five core exhibition galleries, a gallery for national touring exhibitions, an all-purpose theater space, educational spaces, a City Room, a groundfloor marketplace, and a green roof.

Since approximately March 2010, Rose Kennedy Greenway planners believed the Greenway was for natural attractions and not bulky buildings. Boston Museum planners, including CEO Frank Keefe is now looking for another location off the Greenway.

The museum has a nickname: "BoMu".

Core galleries

• Place Over Time tells the story of the ecological and economic transformation of Massachusetts.
• Conscience and Confrontation explores the periodic eruption of political contention ruling Massachusetts, which has often set an agenda for political change across the nation and the globe.
• People of the Bay explores the succession of cultures, from native peoples through the latest wave of immigrants, as they create personal, family, community, and inter-group experiences in this region.
• Innovation Odyssey will focus on the region’s many breakthroughs and “firsts” that have had a global reach, spreading liberty and the abolition of slavery, advancing the causes of universal education and expanded health care, igniting both the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age.
• Sports Town is envisioned as an entry point for visitors who may not see themselves as typical museum-goers. They are drawn into the gallery - and the museum beyond - because exhibit content relates to their lifelong passion of sports, which has many "firsts" is Massachusetts.

Educational mission

The Boston Museum will broaden and deepen the appreciation of Boston as a "living classroom" and campus for thematic learning

Thematic Learning

Thematic learning is an instructional method of teaching in which emphasis is given on choosing a specific theme for teaching one or many concepts . It is based on integrating various information and use it to demonstrate the topic...

 through partnerships with other historic sites and cultural institutions, sharing best practices and working in concert to create new programming and enrichment activities for educators and students throughout the region. We will also reach out to national audiences through extensive use of electronic links and new media technology.

The Boston Museum will be a transformative educational experience for learners of all ages and styles. Its galleries will use a wide variety of approaches aimed at engaging families, school children and adults at all stages of life. Most importantly, the stories visitors encounter will have personal resonance, whether of ancestors arriving on Long Wharf or their own physical relationship to the place of Boston.

Board of directors

• Louis Miller - Boston Museum Board Chairman; Rackemann, Sawyer & Brewster
• Roger Berkowitz - President and CEO, Legal Sea Foods
  Legal Sea Foods
  Legal Sea Foods is a Boston-based seafood restaurant group, with locations along the Eastern Seaboard. Besides Massachusetts, there are also locations in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, DC, as well as in Warwick, RI, Boca Raton, FL and Atlanta, GA.-History:It was...
  
  
• Janey Bishoff - Bishoff Communications
• Janice Bourque
• William M. Bulger
  William M. Bulger
  William Michael "Billy" Bulger is a retired American Democratic Party politician, lawyer, and educator from South Boston, Massachusetts, who for many years was President of the Massachusetts Senate and president of the University of Massachusetts...
  
  - President Emeritus, University of Massachusetts
• Jill Ker Conway
  Jill Ker Conway
  Jill Ker Conway is an Australian-American author. Well known for her autobiographies, in particular her first memoir, The Road from Coorain. She was also Smith College's first woman president, from 1975–1985, and now serves as a Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
  
  - President Emerita, Smith College
• Ralph Cooper - Veterans Benefits Clearinghouse
• Callie Crossley - WGBH Commentator
• Anne D. Emerson - President Emerita, Boston Museum
• David Feigenbaum - Senior Principal, Fish & Richardson
  Fish & Richardson
  Fish & Richardson P.C. is a national law firm practicing intellectual property law.Fish is the 109th largest firm in the United States. Fish has over 350 attorneys, of which 96 percent are dedicated to intellectual property law. Fish is one of the most sought-after firms for both patent...
  
  
• John Fish - CEO, Suffolk Construction
• Ronald Lee Fleming - Founder, Townscape Institute
• Richard M. Freeland - Massachusetts Commissioner of Higher Education
• William Galatis - Dunkin' Brands Franchisee
• Perrin M. Grayson, Esq.
• Frank Keefe - CEO, Boston Museum
• Don Law - President, Live Nation - New England
• Alyce J. Lee
• Tunney Lee - Professor Emeritus, Senior Lecturer, MIT
• Kevin McCall - CEO, Paradigm Properties
• Jane Manopoli Patterson
• James E. Rooney - Massachusetts Convention Center Authority
• William B. Tyler - Chairman Emeritus - Board; Rackemann, Sawyer & Brewster
• James B. White - President Emeritus -Board; Elaw Corporation
• Linda Whitlock - Former Nicholas President & CEO, Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston
• J. David Wimberly - Chairman Emeritus, Frontier Capital Management

National Advisory Committee

• Lou Casagrande - Dean of Education, Social Work, Child Life and Family Studies, Wheelock College
• Spencer R. Crew - Executive Director and CEO, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
• Drew Gilpin Faust - President, Harvard University
• Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - Director, W.E.B. DuBois Institute, Harvard University
• David Gergen - Director, Center for Public Leadership, Harvard University
• Doris Kearns Goodwin - Historian/ Author
• Marian L. Heard - President and Chief Executive Officer, Oxen Hill Partners
• Michael Patrick MacDonald - Author/ Activist
• Thomas H. O'Connor - Professor Emeritus/ University Historian, Boston College
• Nathaniel Philbrick - Author
• Robert D. Putnam - Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University
• Elizabeth Shannon - Writer/ Teacher/ Administrator, Boston University
• Cathy Douglas Stone, Esq.
• Margot Stern Strom - Executive Director, Facing History and Ourselves
• Andrew Viterbi - President, The Viterbi Group

Project Consultants

• Richard Rabinowitz, Chief Historian
• Cambridge Seven Associates, Architecture
• Mikyoung Kim Design, Landscsape Architecture
• Boston History and Innovation Collaborative, Content for Innovation Gallery and other galleries
• ConsultEcon, Inc., Economic Feasibility Consultants

External links

• The Boston Museum website
• Boston Museum seeks new site, The Boston Globe
  The Boston Globe
  The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...