Collections
In a region known for its early American architecture and local history collections, Old York is a museum with few equals in the breadth and depth of its collections. Old York's collections are purely local in origin. Most were donated by community residents descended from the people who originally owned, made and used the objects. One example is the circa 1730 black walnut drop-leaf dining table belonging to Sir William Pepperell, the only colonist knighted by the King. Upon seeing the table in the Emerson-Wilcox House, Leigh Keno of The Antiques Road Show exclaimed, "You could visit a thousand museums and not see something like this!"
In recognition of the museum's exemplary local history collections, Old York is frequently asked to loan out pieces of its collections. In recent years, the museum's collections have been lent to and exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Faunces Tavern Museum in New York City, the Yale Art Museum, the Yorktown Victory Center, the Hoover Presidential Library, the George Bush Presidential Library, Maine Historical Society and the Currier Gallery of Art. The intellectual quality of Old York's collections is well-known by scholars and museum professionals and pieces of the collections are highly sought-after for research and exhibition use.
In addition to loaning pieces of the collections to other institutions, the museum also mounts special exhibitions, which provide the opportunity to take artifacts out of the context of period-room displays in order to highlight particular characteristics, themes or interpretations. A recent example showcased what has been called the crown jewel of the museum's collections: the Bulman Bedhangings. Donated to the museum in 1906 by descendants of York resident Mary Bulman, the Bulman Bedhangings are the only complete set of eighteenth-century crewelwork bedhangings made in North America known to exist today. Under the director of former Curator Thomas B. Johnson and in in collaboration with Edward Maeder, Curator of Textiles at Historic Deerfield, and Laura Fecych-Sprague, an independent scholar and museum curator with expertise in Maine's historic interiors and decorative arts collections, the bedhangings were closely studied to determine their true configuration. Research showed that the bedhangings had been hung erroneously from the time they were first exhibited in 1906. In 2004 the reconfigured bedhangings were the centerpiece of an exhibition of American needlework that explored changing ideas about women's education, family, marriage and death.