Fred Calabretta

Fred Calabretta is Curator of Collections and Oral Historian at Mystic Seaport, and previously worked for nine years as the Museum's Sound Archivist. In addition to his experience with audio visual materials, he has worked extensively with object, photographic, library, and archival collections since 1980. He served as co-curator for Mystic Seaport's signature exhibition, “Voyages: Stories of America and the Sea” and has curated exhibitions entitled the “Stonington Fishing Fleet: Tradition and Transition,” and “Frozen In: Captain George Comer and the Hudson Bay Inuit,” all of which incorporated extensive oral history elements.

He has conducted several hundred audio and video oral history interviews, and directed a number of oral history projects. He is past-president of the New England Association of Oral History, past-chair of the Oral History Section of the Society of American Archivists, and was an instructor for the Museum and Library Archives Institute in Massachusetts from 1994 to 2004. Fred has presented oral history workshops and training, often sponsored by SAA, for a wide range of organizations throughout the country. His publications include two books; Guide to the Oral History Collections at Mystic Seaport Museum, 1992 and Fishing Out of Stonington, 2004. In addition, he contributed a chapter on oral history for Museum Archives, 2nd ed., published by SAA in 2004, and has written articles for several other publications including Sea History magazine.