Exhibits
The museum offers a wide range of multi-media and interactive exhibits coupled with lively interpretive programs that vividly illustrate the region's rich maritime heritage. When in homeport, the ship herself is the major "exhibit". Berthed within yards of the museum, Niagara is visible from the building's bay side picture window. Inside, the centerpiece exhibits of the museum are a former steam-powered electricity generating station and a reconstruction of the mid-ship section of the USS Lawrence. The replicated Lawrence, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's first flagship during the Battle of Lake Erie, comes complete with mast, spars and rigging to foster hands-on learning in the ways of sail handling.
Another powerful display is the adjoining section of the Lawrence replica that has been blasted with live ammunition from the current Niagara's own carronades at the National Guard training facility in Fort Indiantown Gap, near Harrisburg. This unprecedented "live fire" exhibit of the Lawrence recreates the horrific carnage inflicted upon both ships and men during the Battle of Lake Erie and throughout the Age of Fighting Sail. Other exhibits tell the stories of the USS Wolverine (previously the USS Michigan), the nation's first iron-hulled warship, the environmental transformation of the Great Lakes ecosystem and much more.
Julian Oliver Davidson's epic Painting of the Battle of Lake Erie is a masterpiece that is on display.
Read more about this topic: Erie Maritime Museum
Famous quotes containing the word exhibits:
“After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every woman who visited the Fair made it the center of her orbit. Here was a structure designed by a woman, decorated by women, managed by women, filled with the work of women. Thousands discovered women were not only doing something, but had been working seriously for many generations ... [ellipsis in source] Many of the exhibits were admirable, but if others failed to satisfy experts, what of it?”
—Kate Field (1838–1908)
“It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)