Events at Member Institutions

Join Skowhegan History House Museum & Research Center for A Conversation with Penobscot Artist Barry Dana. 

Thursday, June 8 at 7pm, in person at the Margaret Chase Smith Library, 56 Norridgewock Ave, Skowhegan.

Barry will share his process in creating a beautiful new mural commissioned by the Skowhegan History House depicting life along the Kennebec prior to European contact. This will be an open ended conversation about history and culture along the Kennebec.  He will offer visual representations of his experience of his culture, his tradition and the natural world.

Barry Dana was born and raised on Indian Island. He is a self taught painter, birch bark basket maker, educator and former chief of the Penobscot Nation. After graduating with a forestry degree from UMO, he got a degree in education and for 14 years taught a course to strengthen the connection with nature and culture for the elementary school children on Indian Island. This course evolved to his current school visit program that has taken him all over the state to share his culture and traditions with non-native children of all ages. He has dedicated his whole life to preserving Wabanaki culture and language through his school visits and through his basket making and painting.

This talk is a part of Skowhegan History House's Wabanaki Voices Speaker Series. 

FMI: visit https://skowheganhistoryhouse.org/speaker-series/ or call (207) 474-6632.

The Skowhegan History House Museum & Research Center is pleased to announce that Mali Obomsawin is the next speaker in its Wabanaki Voices Speaker Series.  On Thursday June 15 at 7pm, Mali Obomsawin presents the living Wabanaki history of the Kennebec River region and its people from before European arrival to the colonial era (up to present) and the LandBack movement in Maine and beyond.

Obomsawin's tribal historic preservation research focuses on Abenaki community history and its intersections with other Wabanaki nations in the modern-day US. The Abenaki of today make up two federally recognized First Nations (Odanak and W8linak) in Canada, but originally come from homelands in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

Mali Obomsawin is a musician, writer, and community organizer originally from Farmington, Maine and a citizen of Odanak First Nation (Abenaki). She currently serves as executive director of Bomazeen Land Trust, an inter-tribal Wabanaki initiative dedicated to land return, rematriation, and food sovereignty across Wabanaki homelands. Mali also works as a consultant and writer with Sunlight Media Collective and is committed to telling stories at the intersections of environmental justice, history, and tribal sovereignty through her work. Her writings have also been published in The Boston Globe and Smithsonian Folklife Magazine. Mali holds a dual degree in Government and Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College (2018).

This event is free and takes place at Tewksbury Hall on Weston Avenue in Skowhegan and will also be broadcast via Zoom.

Join by Zoom here: https://bit.ly/45Azt2m or visit https://skowheganhistoryhouse.org/speaker-series/

FMI: (207) 474-6632

Portland---Come celebrate the opening of the Tate House’s 2023 season on Saturday, June 3 rd from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM (rain date Sunday June 4). We’ll be doing COLONIAL up big with lots of fun activities for the whole family. Our special guest is Colonial Reenactor Michael Dekker who will describe Native-Colonist trade in the 17 th and 18 th centuries with his Living History Mobile Museum. Michael is the author of French and Indian Wars in Maine and he will be engaging folks all day with his extensive knowledge of the time period.

Colonial games and activities for children will be offered from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM while one-hour docent-led tours of the Tate House will commence at 10 AM, 11 AM and 12 noon. There will be a backyard performance of colonial-dressed characters-- Tate Family & Neighbors--from 1:00 to 2:00 PM. Other exhibits include Herbs and Plants of the Colonial Garden and Herbal Tea Tasting from 10:00-12 noon. Historic textile aficionado Vivian Cunningham will be demonstrating 18 th century clothing throughout the day.

Special tours by our consulting curator, Laura Sprague, and executive director, Holly K Hurd,will highlight NEW collections and tour narratives, including Native baskets and the work of a domestic servant who was probably enslaved. These tours will occur every half hour from 2:00 to 4:00 PM. Docent Bill Gousse will offer an Architectural Tour at 2:30 PM whichprovides at look at the Tate House attic and cellar, not included on a regular tour.

The cost for the day’s activities is $18 for adults, $7 for children under 12 years and $35 for families with children. Member prices are $15 adults, $5 children, and $30 for families.

Come join in the fun and experience this unique museum with its colonial trappings LIVE!

Tate House Museum will be open for regular house tours on Wednesday June 7. Please visit our website for advance tickets and information: www.tatehouse.org.

Atlantic Coast Preparedness Workshop Series (in-person) – https://www.nedcc.org/acpw 
Portland Art Museum, Maine, August 17th  
Greetings from the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC). I am reaching out to share information about NEDCC’s Atlantic Coast Preparedness Workshop series. Eight low-cost workshops for cultural heritage organizations, emergency management personnel, and government departments along the Atlantic Coast of the United States, funded partly by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. These in-person workshops provide the opportunity to acquire hands-on experience with salvage techniques for formats commonly found in cultural collections, including books, documents, photographs, and audiovisual materials. Dates and locations for each state are on the project page.    

Portland --- It’s that time of year again when fingers are itching to get out into the garden. On May 20 from 9:00 AM to 1:00 pm the Tate House Museum at 1267 Westbrook St., Portland invites you to shop for perennials and annuals for your garden. New this year: Native Plants for sale! Children (and all ages) are invited to make a native plant “seed bomb.” The Tate House kitchen will be open from 10 am to 12 noon with a special garden-themed display and information about plant use by the Tate family.

This popular plant sale features perennials and herbs divided from the Tate House garden along with perennials and native plants from local gardens. There will also be a variety of annual flowers, vegetable seedlings, and hanging baskets to choose from. This can be your one-stop shop for the garden this year! Come and enjoy a cup of coffee while you pick out those special plants.

Proceeds from the sale support the educational mission of Tate House Museum, the only colonial period public museum in Cumberland County.

FMI: Contact Holly K. Hurd

Tate House Museum

1267 Westbrook Street

Portland, ME 04102

hkhurd@tatehouse.org

207-774-6177

April 18, 5:00PM-6:30PM | Attend live via Zoom: REGISTER HERE

Join us for a free virtual screening of "Bounty" followed by a conversation with filmmakers and educators.

Bounty, part of the Upstander Project's Dawnland film series, reveals the hidden story of the Phips Proclamation, one of many scalp-bounty proclamations used to exterminate Native people in order to take their land in what is now New England. In the film, Penobscot parents and children resist erasure and commemorate survival by reading and reacting to the government-issued Phips Proclamation’s call for colonial settlers to hunt, scalp, and murder Penobscot people.

Following the screening, moderator Jared Lank,Mi’kmaq documentary filmmaker, will engage a panel including Dawn Neptune Adams, Penobscot filmmaker and journalist, Sunlight Media Collective, Bounty co-director/participant; Zev Bliss, Educator for Portland Public Schools; and Mishy Lesser,Learning director, Upstander Project, co-director, the Upstander Academy, and Emmy® award-winning researcher, in a conversation about the the film.

Place Justice is a statewide truth-seeking and historical recovery initiative of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous, and Tribal Populations that seeks to engage Wabanaki and Maine communities in examining a wide range of commemorative practices to better understand and respond to the ways in which racialized and Indigenous populations are represented in or absent from the narratives inscribed on our natural and built environment.

The Place Justice Event Series features free, virtual and in-person panel discussions and film screenings to engage the public in considering some often complex and contentious issues. Whose stories are being told and whose suppressed? Whose legacies are being forwarded, and at whose expense? 

Learn more about the Permanent Commission, the Place Justice Project, and the full event series.

Contact us with your questions: placejusticemaine@gmail.com

Julia Bouwsma, Maine poet Laureate, will do a reading of new and published poems, followed by a Q&A session. Julia lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, homesteader, editor, teacher, small-town librarian, and Maine’s current Poet Laureate. Bouwsma is the author of two poetry collections, Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017), both of which received Maine Literary Awards for Poetry Book. Other honors include the Poet’s Out Loud Prize (2016-17), the Cider Press Review Book Award (2015), and residency fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Monson Arts (Monson, ME), Annex Arts (Castine, ME), and Storyknife (Homer, AK). She currently serves as the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, ME and teaches in the Creative Writing department at the University of Maine at Farmington.  Tickets are free with a suggested donation of $10.00. https://www.rufusportermuseum.org/event-details/readings-and-q-a-with-maine-poet-laureate-julia-bouwsma

Nathan Scholl, a Geo-archaeologist/Principal Investigator, will present his discoveries at Shawmut Dam and adjacent riverfront properties on Friday, March 31, at 7 p.m. This free program is sponsored by Skowhegan History House and takes place at the Skowhegan Free Public Library at 9 Elm Street. It will also be broadcast via Zoom.

Mr. Scholl worked between 2019 - 2021 for a consulting firm specializing in cultural resources management and historic preservation services. He visited History House in 2021 with questions about 1800s early ferry services and first settlers. During the visit he discovered a link between Philbrick’s 1809 pottery factory and pottery shards found in the heirloom gardens that match those found at the dig sites. He commented how rare it was to find an original source of any recovered artifact.

Other unearthed artifacts could be related to Benedict Arnold’s army as it moved upriver through Skowhegan towards Quebec in 1775.

For more information, contact Patricia Horine at psaeon2@gmail.com or 207-474-8215.

The presentation will also be broadcast online via Zoom. To register for the Zoom call, visit https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYvdOCqrz8uGN3-0bM9DGc1H6DOu9_dhI_2

The Castine Historical Society will debut the second season of the exhibition, Clark Fitz-Gerald: Castine’s Celebrated Sculptor-in-Residence.  The exhibit was so popular we are bringing it back with many new sculptures.  This will be a fresh new look at this artist’s amazing career.  For detailed exhibit hours visit www.castinehistoricalsociety.org.

Clark Fitz-Gerald: Castine’s Celebrated Sculptor-in-Residence will explore the life and work of the sculptor, Clark Fitz-Gerald (1917-2004). When Fitz-Gerald moved to Castine in 1956, he had already made a name for himself as a sculptor. Throughout his long career, he achieved regional, national, and international renown for his work. On display will be sculptures lent from private collections, along with Fitz-Gerald’s drawings, historic photographs, and writings from the Clark Fitz-Gerald archival collection donated to the Castine Historical Society by the family in 2017.

The Castine Historical Society offers guided Walking Tours of Castine for the 2022 season! Starting June 17, the staff and volunteers of the Historical Society will offer Castine Uncovered Walking Tours, a fun, informative, outdoor learning experience.  All tours are free of charge, but donations are greatly appreciated and can be made onsite or on our donations page. No reservations are required for the tour.

June 17-October 10:

• Friday, Saturday, and Monday at 10 AM

Meet your guide in front of the Abbott School at 17 School Street, and take in the sights and sounds of Castine while learning about our beautiful town and its historical significance.  The tour takes approximately one hour, and will give you an overview of Castine’s history, identify buildings of architectural significance, show you several of our beautiful Elm trees, and point out Fort George, the earthworks of a Revolutionary War British fortification.  Please wear good walking shoes!   The tour is a little over 1/2 mile long and involves some inclines.  

If you are not in Castine at one of these times and would like to set up a special tour, please call us at (207) 326-4118, or send an email to info@castinehistoricalsociety.org.  Special tours are offered 7 days a week through the season, but must be arranged a minimum of 48 hours in advance.