SALEM, MA – The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) is pleased to announce a slate of exhibitions and programming for 2026 that support the quadricentennial celebration and preexisting Indigenous history of Salem, Massachusetts. From special lectures, tours and film screenings to a footwear artist in residence, PEM will offer Salem residents and visitors a wealth of opportunities to consider the city’s past, present and future throughout the anniversary year.
“As the nation’s oldest continuously operating museum, we’re thrilled to lend our efforts to help celebrate the city of Salem,” said Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, PEM’s Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Executive Director and CEO. “PEM’s collections provide rich storytelling opportunities for Salem 400+, and our curators, librarians and educators are all working together to create an unforgettable series of special programming for 2026. As always, we are pleased to offer free admission to Salem residents as well as people who work in Salem.”
Throughout 2026, PEM will continue to showcase several ongoing exhibitions focused on Salem history, including Salem Stories; The Salem Witch Trials 1692; and a re-installation of PEM’s original exhibition building, East India Marine Hall. Across the museum, visitors will find fascinating connections to Salem’s history in its galleries, including the historic partnership between museum director Edward Sylvester Morse and Korean diplomat Yu Kil-Chun, who donated his personal effects to the museum in the 1880s, helping establish the first Korean art collection in the United States. In PEM’s Fashion and Design gallery, a significant rotation of works from the collection will feature direct ties to aspects of Salem’s history and the people who have called the city home. Other fascinating stories of Salem’s past will be featured prominently in PEM’s On This Ground: Being and Belonging in America exhibition, as well as its Maritime Art and History and Asian Export Art galleries.
To honor the lesser-known stories and offer behind-the-scenes insight into what makes the city so singular, PEM is pleased to present Salem Sketches, an exhibition of mini-documentaries produced over the last 15 years by Perry Hallinan, Joe Cultrera and several other local filmmakers for presentation at the Salem Film Fest. More than 50 films on topics ranging from monarch butterfly breeding to the Black Picnic at Salem Willows will be featured in an immersive experience.
2026 also marks the continued commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. PEM’s Phillips Library will open a new exhibition about Salem printer and publisher Ezekiel Russell’s role in circulating the Declaration of Independence. The exhibition will feature extremely rare and valuable broadsides, along with later reprintings and a contemporary interpretation of the Declaration of Independence, drawn exclusively from PEM’s Phillips Library, one of the oldest research libraries in the country.
In the summer of 2026, bootmaker and artist Sarah Madeleine T. Guerin will embark on a Footwear Artist in Residency project, turning PEM’s “ten-footer” Lye-Tapley Shoe Shop and the John Ward house into active spaces for storytelling. Guerin will demonstrate traditional shoemaking techniques in the historic structures and share the distinctive footwear-making legacies of Massachusetts and their ongoing contemporary impact. This undertaking connects to the nationwide Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026 initiative and links PEM’s historic properties to our collection of footwear, which is the largest of its kind in the nation.
Through guided and self-guided walking tours, PEM is pleased to activate its downtown Salem campus, which is recognized as a Level II Arboretum and features more than a dozen historic properties. In October, PEM will offer its Haunted Histories experience, which provides evening access to several of the museum’s historic houses.
Opportunities for learning and exploration with the museum’s PEM Reads book club will highlight books focused on Salem in 2026. A series of curator talks will offer a deep dive into each century of Salem’s history to provide new insights into personal stories and narratives connected to works of art. In-school programs and afterschool workshops will be tailored to Salem's past, present and future throughout the year, as will all of PEM’s recurring Learning and Community Engagement programs.
The PEM Shop will also commemorate Salem 400+ by reproducing souvenir items from Salem’s famed heritage jeweler, Daniel Low & Co., and reviving vintage logos, images and ephemera from Salem.
About Salem 400+
Salem 400+ commemorates Salem’s quadricentennial while acknowledging the preexisting Indigenous community. The celebration explores the opportunities and connections of Salem’s multifaceted history while crafting a vision for current and future generations. Learn more at salem400.org.
About the Peabody Essex Museum
Founded in 1799, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts, is the country’s oldest continuously operating museum. PEM provides thought-provoking experiences of the arts, humanities and sciences to celebrate the creative achievements and potential of people across time, place and culture. By connecting people through inquiry, empathy and dialogue, PEM encourages an understanding of our shared humanity and fosters a sense of belonging in a complex, ever-changing world. We build, steward and share our superlative collection, which includes African, American, Asian Export, Chinese, contemporary, Japanese, Korean, maritime, Native American, Oceanic and South Asian art, as well as architecture, fashion and textiles, photography, natural history and one of the nation’s most important museum-based collections of rare books and manuscripts. PEM offers a varied and unique visitor experience, with hands-on creativity zones, interactive opportunities and performance spaces. The museum’s campus, which offers numerous gardens and green spaces, is an accredited arboretum and features more than a dozen noted historic structures, including Yin Yu Tang, a 200-year-old Chinese home that is the only example of Chinese domestic architecture in the United States.
IMAGE CREDIT
PEM’s Lye-Tapley Shoe Shop © Peabody Essex Museum. Photo by Walter Silver/PEM.
MEDIA CONTACT
Whitney Van Dyke | Director of Marketing & Communications | whitney_vandyke@pem.org | 978-542-1828