Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art

Visit the only institution devoted to this art form, located in bucolic Western Massachusetts (from Parents’ Choice)

If it were in Manhattan or downtown Boston or next to the new public library in Seattle, chances are you would have heard of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Open since 2001 and the only institution of its kind in our country which is devoted to this art form, if the museum is still an unknown treasure that’s because of its location in bucolic Western Massachusetts. But that’s not to suggest it isn’t rightly situated.

In bucolic Western Massachusetts where Rural meets Academic and Yankee goes Bohemian

Amherst and the Five College Area is where Rural meets Academic and Yankee goes Bohemian. University women with crewcuts tap away at laptops in coffee shops built in converted riverside mills. Companions read paperbacks in the collapsed couches at nearby bookstores. Elsewhere, matrons in L. L. Bean sweaters park Volvo station wagons outside restored colonial homes. In this milieu and next to Hampshire College is an architectural masterpiece set in an apple orchard–the Eric Carle Museum, all glass and brushed aluminum, blonde wood and whimsical decorations on the bathrooms’…