If you love museums, you will enjoy Amherst because there are many places you can visit. There are two on-campus museums that you should definitely check out:
Mead Art Museum
Mead houses the Fine Arts collection at the college, which includes a variety of art to enjoy: American and European paintings, Russian art, Mexican ceramics, Assyrian reliefs, Tibetan scroll paintings, and Japanese prints.
During finals season, I love to study in the Rotherwas Room. It is an extravagantly decorated English Jacobean-style parlor room. Just imagine when you have been working for three hours straight, how relieved you would be when you look up and see the beautiful Mount Holyoke range.
Beneski Natural History Museum
Beneski showcases fossils and minerals collected locally and abroad, many by past and present students and professors. It is home to the world’s largest collection of dinosaur tracks, the Hitchcock Ichnological Cabinet, which dates from the 1850s. The first floor showcases large Ice Age mammals, including a mammoth––Amherst College mascot!––found by Loomis in 1923.
I also love to study here. (By this point, you might figure that I barely enjoy studying at the library, lol.) If you come early enough, you can get to the quiet meeting room on the second floor. If not, studying at the marble tables right outside the room is great as well.
Besides these two most convenient museums, there are two museums near Amherst that I think are worth to visit:
Emily Dickinson Museum
As some of you might know, the famous poet Emily Dickinson grew up and spent most of her time in this town. Later in her life, she actually mostly stayed in her family’s house just a few blocks away from Amherst. And this house has been renovated into a museum displaying the life of Emily Dickinson.
Amherst students are free to enter by showing their ID and Five College students have discounts. I strongly recommend booking a group tour! The lady who guided us around was very knowledgeable about Emily and pointed out many details in the house that potentially reflected her personality and life choices. The walls were covered with diverse floral patterns and hung with different styles of paintings. Surprisingly, 90% of the furniture was from the original home and they were kept very delicately.
Smith College Museum of Arts
I actually visited Smith’s art museum during pre-orientation, even before walking into Mead! I did not have much time to tour the entire museum, so I only appreciated the European and Asian art sections. Some of the works are really good, reminding me of the days I studied Art History in high school… You would see Greek sculptures, Renaissance paintings, Baroque chiaroscuro techniques, and even wood prints. There are also many more to explore in Northampton––cute shops, tasty noodle restaurants, free music venues…
In addition to these museums, I would also recommend the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Although it is relatively far away compared to the previous museums, I think it is still worth visiting when you have time.
Boston Museum of Fine Arts
NOTE: This museum is on a much bigger scale than the aforementioned museums, so don’t expect to see everything in one day!
It is a very comprehensive museum: American art (indigenous, colonial, and contemporary), European art (Greek, Renaissance, Impressionism, contemporary), Asian art (Chinese, Japanese), Egyptian art, African art, and many more… There’s even a musical instrumental museum if you’re interested in weird kinds of instruments human beings have invented. Also, when you look up at the central atrium, please notice the mural painted by Sargent. I love his allegorical design: Museums act as the guardians of fine arts like Goddess Athena protects Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture from the destruction of Time.
I was both lucky (and unlucky) to visit this museum on a snowy day. Lucky because there weren’t as many people as it would usually be. Unlucky because I had to walk through the heavy snow to the bus station, which was not that enjoyable…
Hopefully, when you visit these places, the weather will be nice and you will enjoy the arts!