Love art? Antiques? Shopping? Why not combine all three passions by joining our Antiques and Museum-goers group. Since the 1970’s, hordes of AWC women have relished going on frequent trips to exhibits, historic homes, and antique shops. We usually sponsor 7-8 excursions each year, even continuing in the summer months. And we never forget lunch! From time to time we arrange a bus tour and invite the entire club. Check out our schedule below…maybe you would like to join us. We usually meet in the Fire House parking lot across the street from the clubhouse and carpool. Costs listed are for the museum only. Your lunch is on you.
ANTIQUES AND MUSEUM GOERS CALENDAR 2025-2026
Save the Date – Thursday, February 19, 2026 The Butterfly Place, Westford, MA
Meet at 10 a.m. behind the Acton Center Fire Station to carpool
The Butterfly Place is an indoor garden filled with hundreds of free-flying butterflies. They can be observed along a winding path through the warm and lush natural habitat. Gift shop on-site. Lunch on you to follow at a local restaurant.
Adults $15, Seniors $13, $5 payable to the driver.
Save the Date – Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Artist Demo: White-Line Woodblock Prints Concord Art, Concord, MA
Meet at Concord Art. Demo 10:30 a.m. – Noon
Learn how to make luminous watercolor-like images using a single carved block with gouged lines separating hand-painted color areas bordered by signature white lines. The artist, Darrell Smith, is a physician retired from Harvard Medical School who started his own printmaking practice often capturing Cape Cod’s coastal life and spirit.
Tickets are free for members, $10 for non-members. Lunch on you after at Fiorello’s.
Please join us!
Thursday, December 18, 2025 – Festival of Trees, The Garden at Elm Bank, Wellesley, MA
The magic of the holidays is almost here.
The Festival of Trees is an indoor display of dozens of decorated trees donated by local organizations and families with themes ranging from classic holiday styles to playful designs. The Snow Village Trains is an indoor miniature holiday world where HO & O scale trains wind their way through festive villages and familiar scenes – Boston at Christmas, Fenway Park, the North Pole, and more. Skaters, Santas and hundreds of twinkling lights bring every scene to life. The outdoor garden is decorated with twinkling lights and decorations, holiday lightscapes, magical displays and hot cocoa and s’mores by the fire pits.
Admission is $27 payable to Audrey Stuart or Laura Wolfe; includes cocoa and s’mores kit. $5 to the driver.
Meet at 2:00 pm behind the Acton Center Fire Station. Our entry is for 3 pm and we will return to Acton after the visit.
The Blessing Barn, Mendon, MA Wednesday, November 19, 2025
The Blessing Barn Home Store is a thrift, antique store and sharing center with four floors of clothing and accessories, furniture and vintage items, and books. All items sold are donated by people in the community with the profits supporting the non-profit Compassion New England. Inside the Home Store are the Bargain Basement and Apparel Store. On Wednesdays, lamps and lamp shades are 20% off. and there is a Fill-A-Bag clothing sale.
Lunch on you is onsite at The Book Cafe and Food Trailer where there are books, brews and bites.
Sign up by November 12th with Audrey Stuart or Laura Wolfe
No charge except $5 payable to the driver. Meet behind the Acton Center Fire Station at 9:30 am to carpool.
Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA: Thursday, October 23, 2025 (Peak Foliage)
Note: This trip will return to Acton right after the tour (no lunch) arriving back in Acton around 1:15 pm.
Mount Auburn Cemetery, a designated National Historic Landmark and the final resting place for many notable individuals, is one of the country’s most significant designed landscapes. Here, the arts of horticulture, architecture and sculpture combine with the beauty of nature to create a place of comfort and inspiration. Our 90-minute guided tour at the peak of foliage season will focus on the landscape, history, and some of the populations buried there.
The tour is planned for easy, level terrain with adequate stops to rest.
Sign up and pay ($15) by October 15th with Audrey Stuart or Laura Wolfe; $5 payable to the driver
Meet behind the Acton Center Fire Station at 9:30 am to carpool. Return time is 1:15 pm.
Wednesday, September 17, 2025 Castle Hill on the Crane Estate, Ipswich, MA
The 2,100-acre Crane Estate is an unforgettable destination with its winding salt marshes, miles of barrier beach, and beautiful hilltop mansion. Captivated by the beautiful landscape, Chicago industrialist Richard T. Crane, Jr. first purchased the land that would become The Crane Estate in 1910. Crane worked with some of America’s leading architects and landscape architects to shape this summer retreat. The area of the property known as Castle Hill was crowned with a 59-room Stuart-style mansion designed by world-renowned architect David Adler. Today, the mansion is protected, along with the rest of Castle Hill, as a National Historic Landmark.
Our visit allows for a 50 – 60-minute guided tour Guest of the Cranes or you can skip the tour and explore the gardens and the first floor of the mansion. Tours are $30 or $15 with a Trustees membership.
Gardens are only is $10 or Free with a Trustees membership
Lunch on you to follow
ANTIQUES AND MUSEUM GOERS CALENDAR 2024-2025
Appetizers and Drinks to follow at the nearby Colonial Inn in Monument Square.
Wednesday, May 28 at 3 pm
Meet at Concord Art Center, 37 Lexington Rd, Concord Center
Food after at The Colonial Inn on you.
There is on-street parking on Lexington Road and in Monument Square as well as public parking in Concord Center.
Please let Audrey know if you are coming so she can make arrangements with the restaurant.
Tickets are $15, payable by April 17 to Audrey Stuart. Tickets include museum admission and a 45-minute Highlights tour of the Museum at 1 pm.
Lunch on you is available at the on-site Tidewater Café. $5 paid separately to the driver for transportation.
Optional tour of Frank Lloyd Wright homes – $45 includes tour of two homes and general admission to the Museum. Space is limited and tickets are non-refundable. Contact Audrey Stuart as soon as possible for ticket information.
The Currier Museum is the only art museum in the world with two Frank Lloyd Wright homes. Accessible by guided tour, they are the only Wright buildings open to the public in New England. Both were built in the 1950s when Wright’s domestic architecture reshaped American home design. Our tour is planned for Noon – 2 pm.
The Currier Museum of Art features European and American paintings, decorative arts, photographs and sculpture. The permanent collection includes works by Picasso, Matisse, Monet, O’Keeffe, Calder, Scheier and Goldsmith, John Singer Sargent, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Andrew Wyeth. Public programs include tours, live classical music and “Family Days” which include activities for all ages.
Thursday, March 27, 2025, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA
Private Guided Highlights of PEM Group Tour – $25 per person with self-guided museum explorationafterward. $25 per ticket payable by March 19 to Audrey Stuart, plus $10 to the driver. Meet at 9:30 a.m. behind the Acton Center Fire Station to carpool.
Lunch/Afternoon Tea following at Jolie Tea Company on you
Highlights of PEM Tour: This guided tour will visit a selection of powerful works unique to PEM and will explore the history of this one-of-a-kind museum.
The roots of the Peabody Essex Museum date to the 1799 founding of the East India Marine Society, an organization of Salem ship captains who had brought back from their voyages a diverse collection of objects from around the world. In the late 1860s, the Essex Institute established its mission to collect and present regional art, history and architecture. In 1992, the two organizations consolidated into the new Peabody Essex Museum (PEM). Today the PEM is dedicated to creating a museum experience that celebrates art and the world in which it was made, linking past to present.
Wednesday, February 19, 2025 Wm. S. Haynes Company, Acton, MA
One-hour guided tour followed by lunch at Bella’s, Great Road, Acton. 
No charge for the tour; lunch is on you. Sign-up by February 12th.
Meet at Wm. S. Haynes Company, 68 Nonset Path, Acton at 9:45 a.m.
Wm. S. Haynes Company is considered the most prestigious and longest-lasting flute company in the world. The company started in 1888 in Boston and when George Haynes invented the process of extruding tone holes from silver (as opposed to wood), the company’s reputation for innovation and quality craftsmanship was established. It moved to its state-of-the-art facility in Acton in 2010. You don’t have to be a flutist to appreciate the modern technology, vintage qualities, and distinctive sound of Haynes flutes and piccolos.
Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art – Thursday, November 14, 2024
The RISD Museum believes that art, artists, and the institutions that support them play pivotal roles in promoting broad civic engagement and creating more open societies. Its collection currently contains more than 100,000 works of art and design dating from ancient times to today from all over the world.
Our one-hour guided tour offers an overview of significant works of art from the Museum’s collection. Through an examination of the history of the institution, exploration of the Museum’s architecture, and discussion around significant works of art, participants become familiar with the Museum’s rich collections and its vibrant role in a community of artists and designers.
Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House – Thursday, September 26, 2024
House and Garden Tour of this New England Historic property in Gloucester, MA
$32 per person for tour plus $7 to the driver. Lunch following on you (location to be decided)
Meet behind the Acton Center Fire Station at 9:30 a.m.
Sign-up and pay ($32 by cash or check payable to Audrey Stuart) by Wednesday, September 18th: To sign up or if you have any questions, contact Audrey at audrey017@comcast.net or text (978) 853-7412
Please join us!
ANTIQUES AND MUSEUM GOERS CALENDAR 2023-2024
The Antiques and Museum Goers Group invites everyone to join us for our last trip of the season.
On Wednesday, May 29, we will be going to Fuller Gardens located a stone’s throw from the ocean in North Hampton, NH – a one-hour drive from Acton Center. Rain date is Thursday, May 30.
Fuller Gardens is a world-class botanical garden that features thousands of rose bushes and hundreds of varieties that bloom all season long, formal English perennial borders, a Japanese Garden and a tropical conservatory all framed by sculpted hedges. The formal rose gardens follow the Colonial Revival style and were designed in the late 1920s by the Olmstead Firm. The Japanese Garden, English perennials, and Dahlia Display Garden are usually in bloom in May. The pathways are wide grass or gravel with a gentle slope.
Meet behind the Fire Station, 472 Main Street in Acton Center at 9:30 a.m. to carpool.
Tickets are $9 for seniors, $10 for adults purchased on-site. Transportation is $5 to the driver. Lunch will be at a seaside restaurant and is on you.
You can sign-up at the Kentucky Derby Wine and Dine on Saturday (May 4), the May 15 luncheon at Wedgewood Pines, or call or text Audrey (978-853-7412) or Betty (617-417-1772).
Private Walking Tour “Women of Concord” Thursday, Apr 25, 2024 Meet at Noon at the Concord Visitors Center, 58 Main Street, Concord $150 for the group
Lunch to follow at The Concord Colonial Inn (hopefully on the patio) will be on you.
Concord’s women have always been leaders, fighting for justice and creating a uniquely American vision in literature and art. This 90-minute tour discusses the stories of these remarkable women, and shows us the places where they made their mark.
There is NO CHARGE for the visit to the Museums and transportation costs including parking will be paid for from the Group’s existing funds. Meet at the fire station. Lunch after at Jimmy’s Steer House in Arlington is on you.
THE TOUR: On this conversational and interactive tour, Varya Lyapneva will explore the role of fabric in the history of art, looking closely at a few works of painting and sculpture. The stops are Red and Pink (1925), a modernist painting commissioned from Georgia O’Keeffe by the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company; Edgar Degas’ Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen (1880), a sculpture that radically incorporates diverse materials, including a real tulle skirt; and Mama Occllo (1835-1845), a painting from Spanish colonial Peru that depicts the revered cofounder and first queen of the Inka Empire, who was credited with teaching Inka women how to weave cloth. Here she is below being explained by Varya.
THE GUIDE: Varya Lyapneva is an international student at Harvard College from Moscow, Russia, studying the history of art and architecture. Before coming to the Harvard Art Museums, she was an intern at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Outside of class, she does theater, reviews art for The Harvard Advocate, and spends time with the plant-based or animal rights groups on campus.
Check out our Facebook page for the full story in photos!
Thursday, February 29, 2024 Flora in Winter, the Worcester Art Museum “See Art in a New Way! How do you represent a suit of armor with roses? A portrait with peonies? A raging storm with tulips? This winter, come closer to the art you thought you knew, reimagined through floral arrangements throughout our galleries.”
Tickets for the guided tour are $35 and payable to Audrey Stuart audrey017@comcast.net or (978-853-7412) BEFORE February 21st. Meet at the Acton Center Fire Station at 10:00 a.m. There will be a separate payment of $3 to the driver for gas. Lunch is at the Museum Cafe with a special menu matching the theme of the exhibit. The cost of lunch is on you.
Fashioned by Sargent: Wednesday, November 1, 2023 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Lunch at New American Café in the Museum’s glass-enclosed courtyard. Tickets $34 plus $10 to the driver for gas and parking; lunch is on you. Sign up and pay by October 15 at the Luncheon Meeting on October 11, Pie Drop-off on October 13 (1 – 4 pm) or by calling Betty Lowe 617-417-1772 or Audrey Stuart 978-853-7412. Payment in cash or check payable to Elizabeth Lowe. Meet at Fire Station across from AWC at 9:30 a.m.
“The coat is the picture,” John Singer Sargent once said, clearly articulating the role dress played in his work. This exhibition reveals Sargent’s power over his sitters’ images by considering the liberties he took to express distinctive personalities, social positions, professions, gender identities, and nationalities. Exploiting dress was an integral part of his artistry. Alongside about 50 paintings by Sargent, over a dozen period garments and accessories shed new light on the relationship between fashion and this beloved artist’s creative practice.
You can visit the exhibition website at: https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/fashioned-by-sargent
ANTIQUES AND MUSEUM GOERS CALENDAR 2022-2023
Thursday, April 13, 2023, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; Lunch TBD.
Our March trip was cancelled due to weather, so now we are signed up for April for a visit to a one-of-a-kind museum, the Isabella Stewart Gardner. It is a work from the mind of one woman, and it is fabulous. The new date is exciting as our visit is now in the height of the nasturtiums in the atrium, a gorgeous floral display.
In fact, check it out: https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/courtyard/nasturtiums We will meet at the fire station across the street from the library and monument, at 10:00 to carpool. The tour is from 11:30-12:30. Admission $23 for Museum Group Tour. Since we are all paid up from our March registration, we are all set. $5 to driver for gas and parking. Lunch is on you.
A quick slide show of us at the ISGM. Check out our Facebook page for the full show!
ANTIQUES AND MUSEUM-GOERS CALENDAR 2019-2020
OCTOBER 3, 2019, THURSDAY
RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN: EXHIBIT OF GORHAM SILVER: Meet at the fire station at 8:45 to car pool. Admission: $12 for museum, $10 paid to driver for gas and parking. Lunch at Danish restaurant is on you! Museum is handicapped accessible. Deadline to sign up: September 28.
NOVEMBER 7, 2019, THURSDAY
PEABODY-ESSEX MUSEUM: PETER AND CAROLINE LYNCH EXHIBIT AND NEW ADDITIONS TO MUSEUM. For those who haven’t seen the Chinese House and would like to add to their agenda, one car will be arranged to come home later.
NOVEMBER 23, 2019 SATURDAY: HOUSE TOUR IN GROTON being researched as a possibility
DECEMBER 12, 2019, THURSDAY: CONCORD MUSEUM: CONCORD COLLECTS and lunch at the Colonial Inn.
JANUARY 16, 2020, THURSDAY: NEW GREAT COURSES LECTURE ON GREAT ART OF THE WORLD: 1 pm upstairs at the clubhouse. Just come! No need to sign up.
FEBRUARY 20, 2020, THURSDAY: NEW GREAT COURSES LECTURE ON GREAT ART OF THE WORLD (CONTINUED): 1 pm upstairs at the clubhouse. Just come! No need to sign up.
MARCH 19, 2020, Thursday: Burkart Flute Factory in Shirley; Lunch at the Bull Run. Sign up at the March 11th Luncheon. “Burkart is part of a cluster of privately held companies outside Boston that have made Massachusetts a boutique center of high-end flute making.” Boston Globe.
APRIL, 2020: Concord Museum: “AFTER MIDNIGHT” the story of PAUL REVERE coming from the NYC Historical Society: Lunch locally
MAY, 2020: FULLER CRAFT MUSEUM IN BROCKTON
JUNE, 2020: BEAUPORT SLEEPER MCANN HOUSE IN GLOUSTER
ANTIQUES AND MUSEUM-GOERS CALENDAR 2018-2019
SEPTEMBER 20, 2018 THURSDAY
PEABODY-ESSEX MUSEUM: EMPRESSES OF CHINA’S FORBIDDEN CITY
LUNCH AT CAFE OR HAWTHORNE HOTEL
COST: $20 cash $5 for gas for driver.
OCTOBER 5, 2018, FRIDAY
WORLD WAR II MUSEUM IN FRAMINGHAM: WOMEN IN WWII
LUNCH – TBA
COST: $20 for seniors, no gas payment
NOVEMBER 8, 2018 THURSDAY
WORCESTER ART MUSEUM: HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL EXHIBIT
NYC HISTORICAL SOCIETY
LUNCH AT MUSEUM CAFE
COST: $14, if docent added may be more; $5 driver fee
DECEMBER 13, 2018 THURSDAY 2-4 PM
THE RETURN OF THE HOLIDAY HIGH TEA
AT FILHOS, RTE 2A, ACTON
SCONES, SANDWICHES, PETIT FOURS AND TEA!
SIGN UP – Oct. or Nov. meeting
JANUARY 24th AND 31st, 2019, THURSDAYS 1-3 PM AWC Clubhouse
Presenting several of the series, Great Courses — NY Met Museum; January 24th: European Art; January 31st: American Art
April 25th, 2019, Thursday 10:30-2:00 AWC Clubhouse – Upstairs Hall
Presenting three 30-minute courses from Great Courses – NY Met Museum, one on their European collection and two on their American Art collection, followed by lunch at Crossroads. All are welcome! Just show up. No sign up required.
May 10th, 2019 – Friday Time 9:30-noon American Heritage Museum, Hudson
Lunch at Nancy’s Airfield Restaurant in Stow. Sign up at the April Meeting.
More American Heritage Museum in the slideshow below.
June 27th, 2019, Thursday – Essex, MA
We will be visiting Cogswell’s Grant– home of famed antiques author and collector Nina Fletcher Little. It is on over 100 acres and is a gem. We will then be having lunch in Essex. We will assemble at the center Fire Station and leave at 9:15 am.
Well, the visit was quite wonderful. We loved Cogswell’s Grant. See the slideshow!
ANTIQUES AND MUSEUM-GOERS CALENDAR 2017-2018
Acton Woman's Club 