The New England Carousel Museum
The Museum of Fire History
The Bushnell Park Carousel
The Fine Art Gallery
The Future Home of the Greek Museum of Art and History

     The New England Carousel Museum was founded as a nonprofit educational organization in 1990, in Bristol, Connecticut.  At that time, the Carousel Museum rented 10,000 square feet of space on the first floor of the restored factory building at 95 Riverside Avenue and displayed a diversified collection of carousel art and memorabilia.
     A Board of Directors was formed in 1990; they applied for and achieved nonprofit status for the Museum.  A full-time museum professional was hired as executive director on August 1, 1991. At that time the staff was restructured to create a department of public education, an exhibition development team, a public relations function, a procedure for operations, a structure for volunteer involvement, a membership structure, a long term loan agreement, a collection management policy, an archives, and a need to begin serious research on the collection pieces and the subject matter.
     Although called a "museum" when first opened, in reality, an "attraction" was launched.  An "oh! ah!" atmosphere was created, but there were no structured education programs or exhibition materials accompanying the pieces.  Immediate energy went into the research necessary to create educational programs, temporary exhibitions and special events. These activities would provide reasons for producing media releases that bring people of all ages to visit and revisit the Museum while generating income for general operation.  Educational programs were launched that were accurate, informative and fun.  Grant funding was obtained that allowed our project team to research, develop, design, and implement new exhibition material giving our visitors, for the first time, a choice of how they learned about the subject matter.  Wonderful theme parties were produced as fundraisers for the Museum, but more importantly, it gave the community a new look at the Museum.  We started paying attention to our visitors, and through informal evaluation, we started finding out who they were and where they came from, why they came, and what they liked and didn't like about our Museum experience.
     Enormous change has occurred for the New England Carousel Museum and there is more to come.  We have been through many growing pains, all of them helping us to achieve independence, maturity, and some of our goals.   There have been major improvements in many areas including the expansion of the Museum collection thanks to a $100,000.00 grant for collection acquisition from the State of Connecticut.  From 1996 to 1999 we ran a branch Museum in Mystic, Connecticut in a 10,000 square foot leased space.  We have created a restoration department that allows opportunities for artisans, carvers, painters and restorers to work with the Museum on a regular basis to restore antique pieces, create new carousel pieces and demonstrate the art of the carousel.  We have elected individuals of national reputation to our Board of Directors who advise us in the area of collection expansion and will help to guide us through our next phase of growth.  We received a grant from the Connecticut Humanities Council that allowed us to research, write and produce a historic collections manual. We have developed new education programs, broadening our educational menu, and have received high marks from the evaluations on our existing programs. Our goal is to maintain the excellence created in our existing programming while developing new experiences for our visitors.
     In addition, the New England Carousel Museum received the contract from the City of Hartford, in April, 1999, to manage and run the historic Bushnell Park Carousel.  They renewed our contract in May, 2002 for another three years.  This spectacular carousel created in 1914 by Solomon Stein and Harry Goldstein has 48 horses, 2 chariots and a wonderful Wurlitzer Band Organ. Having the responsibility for this million dollar historic antique wooden carousel is a thrill and has allowed us to further fulfill our Museum mission, "to preserve and protect antique wooden carousels and carousel pieces."
     In December of 1998, the State of Connecticut granted the New England Carousel Museum $250,000.00 to create a permanent home for the Museum in Bristol and for the creation of the Cultural Center for Central Connecticut.  Of that amount, $200,000.00 was used toward the $300,000.00 purchase price of the building coupled with a $100,000.00 donation from the Roberts foundation. The $50,000.00 additional funding from the State was used to begin capital improvements to the building, including roof repair.
     As we evolved, The New England Carousel Museum has concentrated on turning the building at 95 Riverside Avenue into The Bristol Center for Arts and Culture.  In November 2000, we expanded the Carousel Museum experience on the first floor of the building by adding three new galleries, one exhibition on the History of the Carousel, and two fine art galleries.  Glo Sessions, a local artist of international reputation, allowed us to create a new show of her work entitled, Bristol 2000: A Retrospective to launch the new fine art galleries in the Cultural Center.  Since that time we have had the opportunity of exhibiting numerous other fine art shows in the temporary gallery space that include fine art, folk art, photography, wood carving and other mediums.  Once completed, we turned our attention to developing the second floor of the building.
     The Museum of Fire History opened to the public on the second floor of the building in June, 2002.  Carlyle Barnes donated his fire equipment and memorabilia collection as well as funding to create this new splendid museum.  The opening of the Fire Museum was accompanied by rave reviews. Funding has been approved by the State of Connecticut for a new Museum of Greek Art and History that will also be located on the second floor.  We are waiting at this time for the funding to arrive so work on this project can begin.  The second floor is currently under construction on the painting studio space for the Museum Restoration Department.   The second floor also houses the studio of our master carver, Juan Andreu, the office of Stanley Maxwell, a performing jazz group, and the Bushnell Park Carousel office, which we manage.  This past year we completed the new second floor entrance that includes special needs accessible restrooms and a special needs ramp to the second floor.
     The unique aspect of the second floor is the major uncommitted floor space which we intend to keep open for all to use.  We plan to create a new multipurpose gallery space that will allow the organizations and artists the opportunity to extend their offerings by overflowing into the gallery to present additional programs and temporary exhibitions.  The second floor will also be used for special functions including receptions, dances, classes, performances and educational programming. We recently had $15,000.00 worth of chandeliers donated to the Museum.  Now installed on the second floor, the lighting has turned the area into a majestic facility rental hall.
 
 

The
New England Carousel Museum
95 Riverside Avenue, Rt. 72
Bristol, Connecticut 06010

Phone - (860) 585-5411     Fax - (860) 314-0483
Email - info@thecarouselmuseum.org