Nearing the public opening of an exhibit that has been in the making for decades, the Worcester Art Museum offered the media a sneak peek of its Arms and Armor Galleries on Thursday, ahead of its public unveiling later in November.
The expansive 5,000-square-foot collection of arms and armor, featuring pieces from the shuttered Higgins Armory Museum, is now on display in a dedicated gallery space on WAM’s second floor. The more than 1,000 artifacts range from medieval suits of armor, to ancient daggers, to slightly-more-modern firearms.
With the Higgins Armory Museum facing persistent financial struggles and difficulties maintaining its collection, the discussion between the two museums over the future of the Higgins collection dates back about 50 years, said Matthias Waschek, director of WAM.
“This conversation had actually been ongoing since the 1970s, and it was very much like romantic dating,” Waschek said. “Sometimes the board of the Higgins was on the proverbial balcony, and we were serenading, and sometimes it was the other way round. But ultimately, what really made the transfer happen was money, or the absence thereof, because it was very clear that the Higgins, in its configuration, in its own space, could not survive.”
Located in a unique building with an exterior made of steel, the Higgins Armory Museum was a frequent destination for Central Massachusetts school field trips over the decades.
But the building’s lack of insulation made it a difficult place to preserve centuries-old armor, Waschek said.
With the new exhibit, the intention was not to simply recreate the Higgins museum, or to mirror larger armor collections like the one at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, said Jeffrey Forgeng, the Higgins curator of arts & armor and medieval art at WAM.
Instead, the goal was to highlight the collection’s global reach, turning it into a unique experience that could only be found in Worcester.
“Our fundamental unifying concept here was, ‘Let’s go global,’” Forgeng said. “That is something that you cannot see in the main other major institutions. If you go to New York, Philadelphia, or Chicago, the major arms and armor collections, front and center there will be knights in shining armor, a very Eurocentric presentation.”
While there’s still plenty of knights in shining armor to go around, visitors entering the gallery are also presented with mannequins wearing armor and wielding weapons from Asia and Africa.
Some of Forgeng’s favorite pieces in the space include a pair of gauntlets made for the prince who would later become King Philip II of Spain, and a rare 17th-century Japanese helmet in the shape of a conch shell, likely made for a warlord or general.
The rear room of the space features two expansive areas of what the museum calls open storage. Featuring sliding wire-mesh racks, the open storage area allows hundreds of items to be displayed at once. Tablets in the room offer more details about items on display.
About 95% of the items on display are from the Higgins Armory collection, which WAM acquired in 2014, according to a fact sheet provided by the museum. Construction of the new galleries began in February 2023, after the relocation of WAM’s research library.
Two miles to the north of WAM, the original Higgins Armory building continues to be listed for sale. The site has been used as an event venue and offices since the museum’s closure.
The armory building and its former collection were the work of John Woodman Higgins, a former industrialist who owned the Worcester Pressed Steel Co. before he passed away in 1961, according to WAM’s website.
The building is now owned by ZJBV Properties LLC of New Hampshire, who purchased it for $850,000 in 2014. The listing does not include an intended sale price.
The Arms and Armor Galleries at WAM will open to the general public on Nov. 22. Timed-entry reservations will be required to visit the galleries, and can be reserved on WAM’s website.
Eric Casey is the managing editor at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the manufacturing and real estate industries.
