Fitchburg Art Museum Merriam Parkway (main entrance) 185 Elm Street (mailing address) Fitchburg, MA 01420 leanor Norcross, artist and museum founder, had already lived a full life by the time women were given the right to vote in 1920. Whether she voted is not known, for at sixty-six, she was again in Paris preparing to exhibit at the Fall Salon. It would be her tenth appearance. Ms. Norcross was "liberated" before the term became a cliché. Even by today's standards, her life was unconventional. At twenty-three she was a Washington (as well as a Fitchburg) hostess. Later, she would cross the Atlantic twenty-four times and live forty years in Paris returning to her hometown, Fitchburg, to be with her father and later to promote art in the city. Although Norcross adopted the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris as her spiritual home, she kept a strong presence in Fitchburg, eventually becoming one of the city's greatest benefactors. She was one of the few women to endow a museum with both money and a collection. Directions: From the east: take Rt. 2 West to Exit 31B (Rt. 12 North). Take Rt. 12 North approximately 4 miles. Turn right after the Central Shopping Plaza. Turn left on Main Street and continue almost to the end. Turn right on Merriam Parkway. The museum is at the end, on the right, through an opening in the stone courtyard wall. From the South: Take Exit 10 (Auburn) from the Mass Turnpike. Follow 290 (Worcester) to 190 North. Exit at Rt. 2 West. After 1/4 mile, exit at 31B as above. From the west: Take Rt. 2 East to Exit 25 ( Rt. 2A Fitchburg-Princeton). Follow 2A south approximately 4 miles to a Fitchburg Art Museum directional sign indicating a left turn. Turn left and continue to the Main Street of Fitchburg. Cross two lanes of Main Street, and turn left on the far side of the Upper Common. Continue to Merriam Parkway (the first right after the Post Office). Turn right on Merriam Parkway. The museum is at the end, on the right, through the opening in the stone courtyard wall. Phone: 978-345-4207 Fax: 978-345-2319 send E-mail visit Website Contact: Mary Ellen Letarte Hours: Tuesday through Sunday noon to 4; closed Monday Admission: Adults $7.00. Students and Seniors $5.00. Members and children 12 and under free he Fitchburg Art Museum was founded by the bequest of Miss Eleanor Norcross. During the years between 1880 and 1920 when Miss Norcross lived in Paris, she became deeply impressed by the quality of small rural museums and their impact on public education. She conceived the idea of founding in Fitchburg a museum to inspire a love for the arts. This she did through the bequest of her collections of European paintings; Islamic, Asian and European Fine and Decorative Art; Classical Antiquities, her own work, and $10,000 which was matched by area residents. In 1925 the museum opened in an in-town estate barn remodeled in French Provincial style. The early museum displayed and interpreted its collections, held changing exhibitions, and conducted a variety of educational programs, including studio art classes for adults and children. Over the years, the museum's facilities, collections and programs have grown and multiplied. Today the Fitchburg Art Museum has fourteen galleries distributed through a block-long complex of three connected buildings, and is the region's most important center for art study and appreciation. In 1995, the museum began a highly innovative collaboration with the Fitchburg public schools, becoming, itself, a regional arts-magnet school in which all academic subjects are taught in galleries using an arts-integrated, collection-based curriculum. Starting with twenty, the school has now two hundred students grades five through eight from fourteen communities. There are plans to develop a three hundred student high school beginning with a ninth grade in August 2006. Because it describes itself as a "Museum with a School at its heart", (the museum serves its school from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.; its general public daily from 12:00 to 4:00 p.m.), the school's educational needs drive curatorial decisions concerning the museum's exhibitions and collections. In 2002, the school officially became a Focus School of Lincoln Center Institute, the first such school outside New York. Miss Norcross, a correspondent with Matthew Arnold, and passionately interested in youth education, would be proud. Funding for this website is provided by Community Crossroads Foundation, The Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, and the museums and historic sites of the Greater Boston History Project.