In Plymouth, although Pilgrim Hall Museum is one of the oldest continuous public museums in the country, when folks visit the stylish displays, set in elegant surroundings, they might be surprised to learn that the Director, Donna Curtin has applied to the Community Preservation Committee, or CPC, for over $3 million dollars in restoration funds.
WATD’s Bobbi Clark has more:
Executive Director Donna Curtin says the museum has been at the cornerstone.
“Of downtown Plymouth for, next year it will be two centuries, and we have come to a point of very serious need for the building and the amazing historical treasures that it houses and we are going to CPC to help us go forward with this project.”
Curtin says the elements of the program:
“That we’re asking CPC to support, total $3.2 million dollars—there is significant contingency built in there because that’s the way these things go. But this is primarily for the full replacement of the roof of Pilgrim Hall.”
So when you take the lid off the building:
“Inside, when you lift that lid off, you have literally multi-millions of dollars of valuable and irreplaceable artwork and artifacts—one of a kind things, we have to remove them. The logistics of taking some of these monumental paintings is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in itself.”
And to help raise some of those hundreds of thousands of dollars, Curtin says:
“We’re also investing our own resources through many fund-raising efforts, including the support of our chief stake-holders. We’ve raised a significant amount of money for this project already from individual contributions, but we’re also going after grants.”
The CPC approved Pilgrim Hall’s application for Fall Town Meeting vote, and that meeting takes place on Saturday, October 21.
