The Flynt Center of Early New England Life

Located  at 37 Old Main St in Deerfield, MA.

Historic Deerfield has a well-deserved reputation for its masterworks in New England furniture, early American metalwares, textiles, needlework and costume, English and Chinese ceramics, paintings, and prints.  The Flynt Center of Early New England Life, which opened in 1998, provides a 27,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art facility containing climate-controlled exhibition galleries, visible storage area, and collection storage for the museum’s most sensitive and highly valued collections. This facility, funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, enables Historic Deerfield to display its collections in thematic ways that the historic houses do not allow.

The Flynt Center is open Wednesdays-Sundays for self-guided tours during the regular season, and weekends during the winter season, from 9:30am to 4:30pm. This facility is fully accessible.

FIRST FLOOR:

The first floor of the Flynt Center features a variety of exhibitions and gallery settings.

PAST EXHIBITIONS

Rotating exhibitions in the Lobby of the Flynt Center change annually. Past exhibitions include: Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North, Dinner Is Served: Dining and the Decorative Arts, The Write Stuff: The Material Culture of Literacy, Stimulating Beverages: Tea, Coffee, and Chocolate Wares at Historic Deerfield, Furnishing the Frontier: The Material World of the Connecticut River Valley, 1680-1720, and Hadley Sampler: An Anniversary Celebration. 

MUSEUM’S SECOND FLOOR: COLLECTIONS STORAGE

While at the Flynt Center, visit the Museum’s Collections Study Gallery — the visible storage area— on the second floor to see other fine decorative arts, featuring our world famous collections of New England furniture and clocks, American powder horns, Samuel Pierce pewter tools, Chinese export porcelain, English pottery, and American ceramics. The collections are arranged in more than 80 glass cases, according to media. Several take away handouts on the subjects of English glass, Fakes and Forgeries, Pewter, Japanned furniture, English creamware, Turned furniture, and English delftware are available. Inside the cases there is minimal information on each object, but an individual number plugged into Historic Deerfield’s collection database (either through your smart phone or one of our computers) will link you to more information and our knowledge about the piece. The installation is a visually stunning space, with the display of important collections of objects that have been rarely shown to the public.  You spend time researching antiques of the past or just relax and enjoy the beauty of decorative arts.