City to unveil Melville statue
Press Release
On Aug. 14 at 11 a.m. at Seamen’s Bethel, 15 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, the City will dedicate its Herman Melville statue. Free and open to the public.
The statue will be located at the Bethel, where Melville once sat in a pew in the southeast corner of the chapel surrounded by other whalers in worship before he sailed out of New Bedford on the voyage that inspired Moby-Dick. Seamen’s Bethel is known as the Whaleman’s Chapel in the novel.
In December 1840, the 21-year-old Melville signed onto the crew of the whaleship Acushnet, a 359-ton square-rigged ship that departed New Bedford for the Pacific Ocean and did not return for nearly two years.
A decade later, he chose New Bedford and his adventure as inspiration to write Moby-Dick, the novel widely regarded as the preeminent work of American literature.
The New Bedford Whaling Museum is hosting a four-day literary and cultural series of events that weekend on Melville and New Bedford’s defining role in shaping Moby-Dick. (See below)
Melville in Our Seaport weekend
Melville in Our Seaport is a four-day literary and cultural celebration honoring the enduring influence of Herman Melville and New Bedford’s defining role in shaping his most celebrated work. Through scholarship, conversation, performance, music, film, and community partnerships, the weekend explores the city’s continuing relationship with Melville while inviting audiences to experience his legacy in fresh and engaging ways.
Coinciding with the installation of New Bedford’s permanent Herman Melville statue at Seamen’s Bethel, the festival brings together nationally recognized writers, scholars, artists, filmmakers, and local cultural organizations to celebrate New Bedford’s remarkable literary heritage.
Purchase tickets for individual events, or make a weekend of it with a discounted weekend pass which includes admission the New Bedford Whaling Museum and to each program segment at the Museum for the full weekend. The Weekend Pass is $85 for Museum Members and $225 for Non-Members (this includes 4-Days of Museum Admission).
It’s a weekend you’ll never forget in a city that changed the course of American literature.
Visit https://www.whalingmuseum.org/program/melville-in-our-seaport/ to purchase tickets
Weekend pass includes
Museum Admission for all Melville in Our Seaport days (Thursday, 8/13 through Sunday, 8/16)
• CUFFE TAXED Film Premiere & Discussion
• Melville in Our Seaport Symposium with a featured conversation and Q & A with Chief Curator & Director of Museum Learning Naomi Slipp, Ph.D. and Adrienne LaFrance, Executive Editor of The Atlantic
• Melville Scholars’ Roundtable, moderated by Marina Dawn Wells, Ph.D., with Melville Scholars Bob Wallace, Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, and Gerard Anthony McGowan
• Cocktail Reception & Visit to the Herman Melville Statue
• In the Whale Film Screening & Conversation: Award-winning filmmaker David Abel presents In the Whale, the remarkable true story of a man who survived being swallowed by a whale
Individual Ticketed Events
Thursday, 8/13, 3 p.m.
$10 for public; $5 for Museum Members.
A virtual conversation, moderated by Ymelda Rivera Laxton, Curator of Contemporary Arts & Community Projects at the Whaling Museum. The talk will feature contemporary authors whose work has been influenced by Melville’s enduring legacy and will be followed by audience Q&A.
Featured Authors: Elizabeth Doss, Playwright, Herman Melville’s great-great-great-granddaughter, and author of Poor Herman; Xiaolu Guo, Novelist, filmmaker, and author of Call Me Ishmaelle, a contemporary retelling of Moby-Dick; Phil Adamo, Author of Kill Ahab: Confessions of a White Whale
Friday, 8/14, 1:30 p.m.
Symposium Day
$50 for public, $25 for Members.
Talks, books, Q&As, Roundtable.
Saturday, 8/15, 5:30 p.m.
Cocktail Reception and Visit to Herman Melville Statue
$50 for public, $25 for Members
Enjoy live music in the Lagoda Gallery before strolling across the street to the newly installed Herman Melville statue for photographs, and remarks by the sculptor Stefanie Rocknak, and special performances celebrating Melville’s connection to New Bedford.
Sunday, 8/16, 2 p.m.
Screening of “In The Whale”
$25 for Public
Join us as we feature a documentary film titled In the Whale, the account of a man who survived to tell the tale of being swallowed by a whale. Filmmaker David Abel will be in attendance for a brief Q&A session after the screening.
In the shark-filled waters off Cape Cod, Michael Packard has long tempted fate. For several months a year, Packard and his longtime mate, Josiah Mayo, cast off nearly every morning around dawn and navigate through the half-light to their diving grounds off Provincetown, the idiosyncratic, isolated community where they grew up. Packard buckles on his scuba tank and plunges into the cold waters to hunt on the seafloor.
As the region’s last-remaining commercial lobster diver, the aging father has had his share of harrowing experiences, which include close encounters with great whites, nearly drowning, and having to pull up the body of a fellow diver. He even survived a plane crash in the jungles of Costa Rica, where he ran a charter fishing business. But what happened to him on a routine dive during a clear June morning was something he never imagined possible, and many around the world refused to believe.
In an experience of biblical proportions, Packard was engulfed by a humpback whale, caught in the watery cavity of its massive mouth. After some 30 seconds of a pitch-black captivity, in which he expected to die, he was spit out, fins first, to the surface, where Mayo and another fisherman rescued him.
The publicity was similarly dizzying for the reclusive fisherman, whose survival story spread around the world in news dispatches. But what came after the limelight dimmed was even more significant for Packard.
•••
Click here to download the 8/13/26 issue: 08-13-26 InclusiveBeach
Support local journalism, donate to the Neighb News with PayPal
