BEV YORK ROOM 

The Bev York Room on the first floor of our main building is the Mill Museum’s largest exhibit room. It is named for former Executive Director and Educational Director Beverly L. York. In one capacity or another — volunteer (1986-95), Executive Director (1995-2005), and Director of Education (2005-2021) — Bev’s contributions to the Museum were immense and invaluable. We recently renovated the Bev York Room, and it is once again open to the public. The south half of the room houses a new, permanent exhibit, “Thread City: The Rise and Fall of the Connecticut Textile Industry,” which establishes an introduction and context for the rest of the Museum. The exhibit is set up as a “discovery experience” — as visitors travel through the room, they encounter a series of interactive charettes that tell the story of how in the 19th century the textile industry rose to dominate Connecticut, and how in the 20th century it mostly disappeared. The Room also features a small theater that plays a 15-minute introductory video to the Museum, as well as an “Education Corner” with hands-on activities for adults and children alike. For a preview of what’s in the Bev York Room, click on any of the images in the “gallery” below, which will bring them up as a slide show.

In addition to our permanent exhibits, the Mill Museum also mounts several temporary or changing exhibits each year, providing fresh new insights or more detailed explorations of textile-related art and history. Because we change our temporary exhibits frequently, there is always something new to see at the Museum! Most of the temporary exhibits are staged in the north half of the commodious Bev York Room, but smaller pop-up exhibits will be mounted from time-to-time in other spaces. To find out more about our current and upcoming temporary exhibits, click here. In addition, many of our past temporary exhibits have been digitized and transformed into virtual exhibits, so that the public can still enjoy them. You can view some of the Museum’s virtual exhibits by clicking here.