Additional college and graduate programs:
Williams-Mystic
Spend a semester at Mystic Seaport studying the history, literature, science and policy of the world's oceans.
Paul Cuffe
Memorial Fellowship
Fellowship for the study of minorities in American maritime history.
The Munson Institute: Research
The collections at Mystic Seaport reflect the extraordinary scope and significance of America's relationship with the sea and inland waterways. Housed in the Collections Research Center, the collections represent a wide variety of materials from manuscripts to fine art.
G.W. Blunt White Library - The library is one part of the Collections and Research Center at Mystic Seaport, where most of the museum's holdings are housed. The research collection of the G. W. Blunt White Library is one of the most significant in the nation with over 70,000 volumes of books and periodicals, 2,000 rolls of microfilm, 1,000 ships registers, 1,000,000 manuscript pieces, 800 oral or video taped interviews, and 9,000 maps and charts.
Manuscripts - The 1,000,000 manuscript pieces include 1,300 logbooks, letters, diaries, business records, i.e. receipts, bills of lading, and Charter Parties, as well as government documents among other items. They can inform layers of study regarding all aspect of the maritime past.
Objects - Mystic Seaport's collection is vast, and touches on nearly all aspects of the seafaring experience. Examples of materials in the collections include scrimshaw, ship's portraits, ship models, half models, navigational instruments, fishing and whaling gear, clothing and other textiles, furniture, tools, period engines and much more.
Within the CRC building a researcher can also have access to 500 historic vessels, 100,000 sheets of ships' plans, 1,500,000 feet of 1,000,000 feet for film and video, another 1,000,000 photograph images, and many of the 1,000,000 objects in the museum's collection.
Munson Institute classes coordinate with the hours of operation with this unique maritime resource.
The Outdoor Museum
Most visitors to Mystic never see the collection storage areas or the library. They typically visit the outdoor museum with its 17 acres, 60 buildings, vessels afloat in the river, formal viewing galleries and one-of-a-kind Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard. These objects and their setting can be valuable research tools for the advanced scholar as well. Climbing aloft on a square-rigger, rowing a whaleboat, and chatting with a skilled blacksmith can offer a level of understanding that only direct contact with objects of the past being put to use can provide.
Students enrolled in the Munson Institute are allowed full access to these historical objects and skilled personnel.