I’ve been to my fair share of museum exhibits, many of which I forget within days. But I still think about the quirkily named Singularly Marine & Fabulous Produce: The Cultures of Seaweed at the New Bedford Whaling Museum — a wonderful intersection of science, art, collecting, and industry, all part of our collective fascination with life beneath the sea. Exhibits come and go, but the storytelling in this New Bedford Whaling Museum seaweed exhibit is unforgettable.

Seaweed: All the Rage

That’s a person wearing a seaweed dress! It turns out that all things seaweed became the rage during the late 1800s and early 1900s; in an age that followed Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the 1858 laying of the first transatlantic cable, scientists and amateurs alike became fascinated with the world beneath the waves. They began collecting and learning about different kinds of seaweed:

In fact, a whole industry sprang up around seaweed collection. This book, “The Seaweed Collector: A Handy Guide to the Marine Botanist,” teaches readers about “what to look for, and where to go, in the study of British Algae.”

Collectors carefully pressed their samples into books, sometimes with an eye toward scientific taxonomy (as a side note, seaweed is an algae that is classified into three groups: brown, red, and green) …

… and sometimes with a more whimsical bent.

It’s worth noting that women were able to join in this particular collecting game (for example, the album above was curated by someone named Margaret Woods). Home seaweed art became a fad.

The Romance of Seaweed: An Artist’s View

Seaweed art also took the stage on a more global scale, making its way through galleries and private drawing rooms. Artists romanticized seaweed gathering in France …

… and across the sea in New England:

Photographers got in on the action, too …

… and painters investigated seaweed in its natural habitat:

Seaweed on the Table

Seaweed made its way onto tableware by the likes of designers such as Limoges …

… Griffin, Smith, and Hill …

… and Beech & Hancock:

Even US President Rutherford B. Hayes had a set of Limoges dinnerware that featured the weedy world.

William Morris took inspiration from seaweed’s swooping forms in his wallpaper creations…

… while other artists dreamed up jewelry-like ornamental designs:

New England’s Seaweed Industry

The Whaling Museum’s seaweed exhibit focuses mainly on examples of art, design, and collection from the turn of the last century. You can also visit a small side room to learn about the New Bedford seaweed industry…

… which provided the eelgrass for Boston-based Samuel Cabot’s home insulation products:

Weedy Inspirations For a New Era

The final room of the exhibit features seaweed in contemporary art.

This exhibit was a wonderful example of the ways museums can revive and explore nearly forgotten subjects. If you’ve never given seaweed much thought, this gallery offers plenty of reasons to start.

Exhibits rotate, so it’s always worth checking what the New Bedford Whaling Museum has coming up next.

Looking for great things to do in New Bedford? Don’t miss my guide to the city’s buildings, gardens, street art, and more.