Leach Library connects you to great museum exhibits

If you are looking for something fun to do over winter break check out a library museum pass. The library’s museum pass program offers discounts to numerous area museums. If you have an interest in art, history, or science there is a museum for you. Here are some of the current exhibits at museums Leach Library has passes for. To reserve a pass contact the circulation desk at 432-1132.

Boston Museum of Science
A Bird’s World: Take a virtual tour of Acadia National Park in this exhibit, which includes a specimen of every bird found in New England. Interactive exhibits offer insight into bird behavior, and New England birders will also find a useful bird "dictionary." http://www.mos.org/exhibits_shows/current_exhibits&d=215

Peabody Essex Museum
Unbound: highlights from the Phillips Library at PEM: Through over 30 exquisitely rare and storied objects from the library's holdings, this exhibition presents works including: a visually stunning leaf from the Gutenberg Bible, an elaborately detailed sketchbook from the Civil War, 19th-century Japanese teahouse pop-ups, the earliest example of paper currency in the Western world, and a signed first edition of The Scarlet Letter. Equal parts aesthetically and intellectually engaging, the works on view offer a glimpse into historical documents that were acquired for their power to both delight the eye and change the world. http://pem.org/exhibitions/143-unbound_highlights_from_the_phillips_library_at_pem

Museum of Fine Arts
Degas and the Nude: The nude figure was critical to the art of Edgar Degas from the beginning of his career in the 1850s until the end of his working life, but the subject has never before been explored in a Museum exhibition. “Degas and the Nude,” co-organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, features paintings, pastels, drawings, prints, and sculpture, and calls attention to the evolution of the treatment of the nude from Degas’s early years, through his triumphant offerings from the 1880s and 1890s, to the last decades of his working career. http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/degas-and-nude

Boston Children’s Musuem
Construction Zone: Dig, tunnel, build (and tear down!) in Construction Zone! Ride a real Bobcat, grab the jackhammer, deploy a team of trucks in your own construction site. Construction Zone is a kid-sized world of building inspired by the Big Dig. Ramps, tunnels, and bridges give children the tools to imagine a city in transition. A low steel walk lets you balance on a “high beam” and the trailer is a place to experiment with every type of block and construction toy you’ve ever dreamed of. http://www.bostonkids.org

SEE Science Center
Seasons of Change: Does your family visit a maple sugar shack every spring? Do you enjoy a trip to the beach and eating seafood, or visiting a farm stand? How about taking a drive out to a fall fair with beautiful foliage all around? With the Seasons of Change exhibit, families who enjoy outdoor activities will be able to learn about and appreciate the seasons that make them possible. Using graphics, multi-media displays, artifacts, and interactive components the exhibit addresses many areas of New England life including agriculture, forestry, fishing and recreation. Visitors of all ages are introduced to the challenges faced by farmers, fishermen and others. Families can engage in testing how ocean acidity levels affect sea-life, observing how CO2 concentrations affect invasive species and much more. http://www.see-sciencecenter.org/visitors/Seasons.aspx