New-England Museum (Boston)

The New-England Museum (1818 – c. 1838) in Boston, Massachusetts, was established at 76 Court Street by Ethan A. Greenwood, Peter B. Bazin, John Dwight and Samuel Jackson. It featured displays of fine art, natural history specimens, wax figures, and other curiosities. Bands of musicians typically performed there during public hours.

Around 1818, Greenwood bought Edward Savage's "New York Museum" art collection, and thus established the New England Museum. Artwork acquired included Savage's own paintings—a portrait of George Washington and his family (now in the National Gallery of Art); portraits of Henry Knox; portraits of Robert Morris; and Congress Voting Independence, a painting begun by Robert Edge Pine and completed by Savage.

Greenwood expanded the museum collections in 1821 by acquiring items from the estate of John Mix of New Haven, Connecticut. Mix's collection "consisted of wax figures as large as life, paintings, beasts, birds, fishes, serpents and reptiles, Indian and Chinese curiosities and 20,000 different species of insects preserved in glass cases. There were also 3 fine organs." In 1822 Greenwood acquired Philip Wood's Market Museum. He also acquired William Doyle's Columbian Museum in 1825; and the collection of Boston's Linnaean Society.

Financial difficulties forced the museum to close in the late 1830s. Around 1839 Greenwood's "assignees conveyed the collections [of the New England Museum] to Moses Kimball" who then founded Boston Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts.

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