Scrimshaw is a traditional 19th century art form now seen through a much wider context and a contemporary lens.

That's the goal of an exhibit which challenges some old assumptions about the process and the product itself.

Jeffrey Brown went to the new Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts to look for our

arts and culture series, Canvas. It's a story of contact impact connections.

Great adventure and great loss.

Humans and animals across two oceans over some 100 years. In the exhibition titled The Wider World

and Scrimshaw, the story is told through objects. Chief Curator Naomi Slip.

There are records of individual experiences

and what those individuals were doing,

whether they were in communities

that were regular ports of call for whalers

or whether they were whalers on shipboard themselves, they were having these extraordinary

experiences.

The romance of sea adventures, the fascination with whales themselves.

It's part of the experience here.

Visitors are greeted by an 8,000 pound juvenile blue whale skeleton.

But in a gallery next door, a special exhibit offers a different kind of window.

Scrimshaw is the traditional art form of carving or engraving on the bones, teeth, and

ivory of marine mammals, typically whales and walruses.

It's most associated with 19th century whaling, in industry long centered, think Herman Melville and Moby Dick, here in New Bedford.

The Whaling Museum in what's still a port city with a working harbor houses the world's

largest scrimshaw collection.

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