Museums in and Around Northampton
Historic Northampton
A museum of local history
Smith College Museum of Art
Temporary exhibitions and masterworks from its collection, including its internationally known French Impressionist paintings. 25,000 objects in one of the nations finest teaching collections.
Museums, and More Museums
Information about 10 museums at one site: the Smith College Museum of Art; Mount Holyoke College Art Museum; National Yiddish Book Center; Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art; Pratt Museum of Natural History; Mead Art Museum of Amherst College; Emily Dickinson Museum: the Homestead and the Evergreens; Hampshire College Art Museum; University Gallery; Historic Deerfield
Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum
Located in the Forbes Library, the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Room is home to a collection of papers, photographs, artifacts, and memorabilia associated with the political and personal life of President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), 30th President of the United States and former Mayor of Northampton.
David Ruggles Center for Early Florence History and Underground Railroad Studies
The David Ruggles Center is committed to providing a regional archive for the study of the Underground Railroad. The Center is a member of the Massachusetts Underground Railroad Network. The Ross Homestead in Florence is one of the Western MA sites included in the National Park Services Underground Railrad Network to Freedom program.
In 1842, a utopian community was formed in Florence, MA called the Northampton Association of Education and Industry. The founders, a mixed group of abolitionists, farmers, and silk manufacturers, supported William Lloyd Garrison and the immediate abolition of slavery and wanted to join together with others who shared these beliefs.
The community planned an egalitarian enterprise around silk manufacturing. For Association members, silk was both practical and ideological—it did not depend on slavery, and labor to make and it could be shared among men, women, and children. The Northampton Association quickly became a hotbed of radical abolitionism, religious reform, and democratic experimentation.
During its existence, the community attracted national figures including Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, David Ruggles and Frederick Douglass. During the four-and-a-half years of the Association, over 200 people would join the community, living out their beliefs in equality and fair economic principles.