Artist Repairing Charlestown Bells

On Saturday, June 8, the Charlestown Bells, the interactive musical sculpture located along the locks of the Charles River Basin, were removed from their current location and transported to the workshop of the artist who originally created and installed them, Paul Matisse.

The mechanisms that let passersby play the bells had been breaking one by one over the years. Only one was in working order when Matisse got a grant from the Department of Conservation and Recreation to fix them.

The bells will be repaired, improved and re-installed sometime near the end of the summer. The improvements being made to the bells and their mechanisms will allow their reassuring tones to ring out for many years to come.

This effort to have the bells repaired could not have been done without the assistance of the artist, Paul Matisse, his assistant and metalsmith Ken Elwell, Karl Haglund of the Department of Conservation and Recreation and several local residents from Charlestown and beyond who volunteered their time to help carefully remove the bells and prepare them for travel back to the artist’s workshop.

Track the progress of the repair and re-installation on the project's Facebook page.

—Submitted by Tom O'Reilly and J.J. Gilmartin, founders of Friends of the Charlestown Bells