Updated April 2021

The Falmouth Heritage Museum is closed due to the ongoing pandemic.  Conditions permitting, we plan to re-open the Museum on Tuesday, July 13th.

Only the Museum is closed–the Society is still busy online.   To see what we've been doing, check out the slides and minutes for our board meetings.

If you require access to an artifact or document in our collections, we can retrieve the item and make it available.  Please contact us at info@thefhs.org.

The Society's Board of Directors reviewed the orders and guidance governing public access to the Museum during its June meeting.

The state order closing the Museum was lifted in June 2020 because the Museum & Barn are considered “public and community buildings.”  State guidance still recommends that we conduct our activities online to the fullest extent possible.

Other historical societies are not in a rush to reopen to the public.  Like us, they are doing what is necessary to keep the lights on.  While most or our work is being done remotely, volunteers must occasionally visit their buildings to access collections. 

Our Museum has now been closed since November 2019—first for winter and now for the pandemic.  The Museum is closed but the Society continues to operate online.  We respond to requests from the community.  We can retrieve material from the collections as needed.  Only our exhibits are inaccessible to the public.

There are two obstacles to reopening the Museum:

• Coronavirus puts our volunteers and visitors at risk.  Many are in higher risk categories—it’s just the nature of town historical societies.
• Compliance with state guidelines is a heavy lift for a small volunteer organization.  Our Museum must conform with the guidance for both museums and libraries.  The guidelines and supporting material are posted here.

The Board adopted a strategy of moving forward slowly and with caution.  The safety of our volunteers and visitors comes first.  We will open the Museum to the public only when we are confident it can be done safely.  This means waiting until the experts tell us the risk is low, and our volunteers and buildings are ready under the new rules. 

We have begun preparing to reopen the Museum to the public.  This includes developing a formal plan, obtaining the necessary supplies, grooming our buildings, and training volunteers.

Reopening will not happen prior to July 2021.

Until then, we will continue doing the work of the Society online.  Our collections will be accessible to the community—online if possible.  We are exploring options for public access to our collections at other locations better equipped for dealing with visitors.  In exceptional cases, we can bring a visitor into the Museum as we do with people performing maintenance.

If you have any questions, please contact us at (207) 781-4727 or info@thefhs.org.