Events at Member Institutions

Maine’s forest is immense. Since Colonial times, Maine settlers have cut trees from its millions of acres of forest. Britain cut thousands of tall pine trees for masts for their royal navy ships. This slide presentation, titled “Logging in Maine,” describes logging from its earliest methods, including primitive cutting and hauling methods and water-powered sawmills, to the development of steam log haulers and steam-powered sawmills in the early 20^th century, when her latest logging book, Trouble in Nathan’s Woods, takes place. Log drives, on the Kennebec River and others, will be discussed. Cowan’s passion for writing about forests and logging was inspired by her family’s history. The Mortons owned Paris Manufacturing Company, located in South Paris, Maine, where they manufactured wooden sleds, skis, and other wood products. They also operated a large lumber camp, where her father lived as a young boy. The program includes pictures of 19^th-century logging camps, shows how logs were harvested and hauled out of the woods, and includes historic photos taken by her grandfather.

Award-winning author and KHS presenter, Mary Morton Cowan, has been writing books and articles for young readers for more than 30 years and has completed several courses focusing on that genre. A Maine native, Cowan graduated from Westbrook High School and Bates College, where she concentrated her studies in English and Music. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and of Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance.

The Kennebec Historical Society’s June presentation is free to the public (donations are gladly accepted) and will take place at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 26, at the Augusta City Center, located at 16 Cony Street in Augusta. If you have any questions about the program, please call Scott Wood, executive director, at 622-7718.

COLONIAL LIVE! Saturday June 22, 12:00 noon – 4:00 pm

OPENING SEASON CELEBRATION AT TATE HOUSE MUSEUM

Join us in celebrating the opening of the Tate House Museum’s 2024 season on Saturday, June 22 nd from 12 noon to 4:00 PM. We’ll be doing colonial up big with fun activities for the whole family. Our special guest is colonial reenactor Michael Dekker who will be demonstrating how structures were built in the 18 th century including the hand-hewing of logs using colonial tools and basic timber framing joinery. Dekker is the author of French and Indian Wars in Maine and will be engaging visitors with his extensive knowledge of the time period.

Colonial games and activities for children will be offered as well as tours of the housefeaturing our new temporary art installation by Ashley Page. There will be other colonial-focused activities such as a colonial play Tate Family & Neighbors, architectural tours,colonial displays, and more! See tatehouse.org for schedule details.Entrance fees are $18 for adults, $8 for children 6-12 (under 6 free), $40 for families with up to 3 children. Members of Tate House Museum are $15 / $5 / $35.

Come join in the fun and experience this unique museum with its colonial trappings LIVE! Experience our new, more inclusive narratives featuring the work and life of a domestic servant who was likely enslaved and Wabanaki baskets representing colonial trade.

Tate House Museum is now open for regular house tours through Oct 12. Please visit our website for advance tickets and information: www.tatehouse.org.

We are offering free house tours on Juneteenth and a special artist workshop with Ashley Page (ticketed) from 12 noon - 3 pm. Registration is required on our website. FMI visit tatehouse.org

FMI: Holly K. Hurd

hkhurd@tatehouse.org

Tate House Museum

1267 Westbrook Street

Portland ME 04102

Enjoy a mystery tour of local homes and gardens that would not normally be open to the public. Each location will present a unique theme. Advanced orders will be taken for a boxed lunch (by phone or through our online store). Proceeds from this even fund the Rufus Porter Museum and it's community programs.

Buy tickets here

Reserve a boxed lunch here. 

“Painting an Inclusive History: Maine Women in Politics,” is an exhibition of the work of Jerri Whitman. Based in Dresden, Maine, Whitman is a longtime artist who works in oil, pastel, acrylic, colored pencil and graphite. Presently, Whitman is working to create a portrait of every woman from Maine who has been elected to the Maine Legislature, the U.S. House of Representatives, or the U.S. Senate. The first twenty-six of these portraits are featured in “Painting an Inclusive History” and are currently on display at the Margaret Chase Smith (MCS) Library. This exhibition opened on Monday, May 20th, and will close on Wednesday, November 27th, 2024.

On Thursday, June 20th, from 4pm to 7pm, there will be a public opening reception for “Painting an Inclusive History” at the MCS Library in Skowhegan, Maine. This event will be free and open to all, there will be light refreshments served, and brief welcoming remarks will be given at 5pm.

The staff of the MCS Library encourages everyone to either attend the public opening reception on Thursday, June 20th, from 4pm to 7pm, or visit the MCS Library before the exhibition ends in November 2024. The MCS Library is open to the public Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm, and reservations are highly encouraged for visitors. To make a reservation, please call the MCS Library, (207) 474-7133.

Margaret Chase Smith Library

56 Norridgewock Ave, Skowhegan, ME 04976

Tate House Museum’s Annual Plant & Herb Sale on May 18

Portland --- It’s that time of year again when fingers are itching to get out into the garden. We invite you to shop for perennials and annuals for your garden in support of Tate House Museum on Saturday May 18, from 9:00 am – 1:00 pm.

This popular plant sale features moderately-priced perennials divided from the Tate House Museum’s 18th century reproduction garden. There will also be a variety of annual flowers, vegetable seedlings, native plants, other perennials and hanging baskets to choose from. This can be your one-stop garden shop to support a good cause!

We will once again have a “Make Your Own Seed Bomb” activity and a sneak peek viewing of Tate House featuring our new art installation by Ashley Page from 10-12 noon.

Proceeds from the sale support the educational mission of Tate House Museum, the only colonial area historic house open to the public in Greater Portland.

FMI: Contact Director Holly K. Hurd

Tate House Museum

1267 Westbrook Street

Portland, ME 04102

hkhurd@tatehouse.org

207-774-6177

Winthrop Maine Historical Society presents A History of the Roberts FuneralHome with Lynn Roberts Reed and Leon Roberts on Thursday, May 9, 2024.6:00 pmAll presentations start at 6:00pm and take place at the Winthrop History and Heritage Center,107 MainStreet. A zoom link is also available athttps://networkmaine.zoom.us/j/81096636540. Meeting ID: 8109663 6540.Contact WMHS at207-395-5199 or atwinthropmainehistorical@gmail.comfor moreinformation.

Lynn Roberts Reed and Leon Roberts will speak to the Winthrop Maine Historical Society on Thursday, May 9, 2024 at 6 pm about the history of the Roberts Funeral Home. The funeral home dates to the mid-1800’s and to  six generations of the Roberts family.  William Harrison Roberts was a cabinet maker and undertaker in Wayne in 1840.  William had four sons. Frank Roberts moved to Georgetown, Mass to establish his own funeral home and Will, Wendall, and Nathan all moved to Readfield where Nathan’s son Leon carried on the family tradition after his father died.  Following a devastating fire in Readfield Village, Leon lost everything and decided to purchase a home on Bowdoin Street in Winthrop and renovated it into the first funeral parlor in the area.   Leon’s sons Carleton and Douglass carried on the family tradition until their retirements when Carleton’s son Terry took over.  Terry’s wife Janice and their daughter Lynn and son Leon joined them and took over when Terry & Janice retired.  With the next generation pursuing alternate careers and no one to continue the family tradition, Leon and Lynn sold the business in 2018 to Jeffrey Forsythe, a funeral director from Fairfield, Maine but both Lynn and Leon continue to work part-time. 

Tate House Museum is pleased to announce our participation in Re-Site 2024 in partnership with SPACE. This Mellon Foundation-funded program is the second edition of a site-specific temporary public art and Portland history-telling initiative first launched in 2020 as part of Maine’s Bicentennial. Re-Site 2024 offers five new artistic projects in partnership with diverse public organizations and spaces that will help expand community knowledge of local histories and their impacts today as well as generate dialogue about what we carry with us into the future. Re-Site 2024 projects come with site histories, artist statements, bibliographies for further reading, and recorded conversations with the artists and other key participants. FMI about Re-Site 2024, visit space538.org.

Tate House Museum will host an Opening Night Reception with Re-Site 2024 Artist Ashley Page on Friday May 10 from 5:30-7:30 pm. This event is free and open to the public, and will include viewing of Ashley’s art installation titled Imagining Freedom in the context of the historic 1755 Tate House. Her artwork will be on display through June 30 and can be viewed as part of Tate House Museum’s regular house tours, opening for the season on June 5, Wednesdays - Saturdays, 10 am - 4 pm, through mid-October.

Ashley Page (ashleypagestudio.com), interdisciplinary artist and Studio and Programs Manager at Indigo Arts Alliance, describes her project as follows: Reconciling Portland, Maine’s history of industrialization and colonization while contending with the global reverberations of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Imagining Freedom, asks the viewer to step into the shoes of an enslaved Black individual, Bet. Her age, appearance, homelands, and quality of life are all unknown, lost to the unraveling nature of time. Only appearing in court records, we know nothing about Bet other than that she was a servant living and working in the Tate House in the 1770s for an indeterminate amount of time. Researching the social, political, and economic landscape of Maine during this period and reviewing archival documents, Page makes an intentional departure from the archive as she asks the guiding question: What did freedom look like for Bet? What did her daydreams look like, sound like, taste like? This historical recovery project grapples with the ways enslaved peoples were excluded from historical records and navigates new ways we tell our stories.

Stay tuned for more information about an upcoming workshop by Ashley Page on Juneteenth (June 19 th ) that will highlight her artistic process. Join us for this unique and provocative viewing and more inclusive telling of Tate House and colonial Portland history.

FMI: contact Director Holly K. Hurd

hkhurd@tatehouse.org

207-774-6177

NEW Exhibit - Northern Nightmares; Monsters in Inuit Art

Northern Nightmares celebrates artworks by Inuit artists from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland in stone, antler, ivory, and on paper. Like people all over the world, Inuit tell many stories of monsters and artists draw on this rich mythology for inspiration. Some of the monsters they depict will be familiar: giants roam northern lands as they do all over the world. Many, such as Palraiyuk, with its lizard-like body and multiple stomachs to hold the various body parts of its human prey, are unique to the North. Tupilak carvings from Greenland have a gruesome story to tell, but also illustrate the complex relationship between Inuit artists and the contemporary art market. Completing the exhibit are a series of works by artists who draw on their imaginations to create new monsters, nightmarish, fantastical creatures of all shapes and sizes.

“The pieces in this exhibit are certainly scary,” reports curator Genevieve LeMoine, “but many are also very beautiful, and some are humorous, too. It has been very interesting to learn more about the stories, and to see the different approaches of the artists.”

The exhibit opened on Tuesday, May 7, and will remain up until Spring 2025.

The museum is located in the John and Lile Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies, 10 Polar Loop. Regular museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10 AM- 5 PM and Sunday 1-5 PM, closed Mondays and national holidays. For more information visit our website at Bowdoin.edu/arctic-museum or call 207-725-3416.

Dr. Lydia Moland, Colby College professor, will talk about her new book, Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life, on Tuesday, April 9th at 6 pm at the Margaret Chase Smith Library, 56 Norridgewock Ave, Skowhegan. 

The program takes place in person and on Zoom.

To register for the Zoom link, visit: www.msad54.maineadulted.org

A prominent abolitionist, Lydia Maria Child’s philosophical thinking and moral courage made her one of the most important voices among white Americans fighting to end slavery. Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) was also a women’s rights activist, Native American rights activist, novelist, and journalist. Despite her activism, she may be most remembered for her poem “Over the River and Through the Wood”.

Dr. Moland’s biography was published by the University of Chicago Press in fall 2022. The book has been reviewed in the New York Review of Books, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and other venues. You can find some of Moland’s writing and speaking about Child in the Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, The American Scholar, Aeon, and on National Public Radio, on her webpage here: https://web.colby.edu/lmoland/198-2/media/

Dr. Moland is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Philosophy at Colby College where she teaches courses on moral philosophy, aesthetics, and the history of modern philosophy. She has written on nineteenth-century German philosophy, including two books on G.W.F. Hegel and an edited volume on the philosophy of humor in the nineteenth century.

Books will be available for sale.

To attend this program via Zoom, please register in advance at www.msad54.maineadulted.org 

Sponsored by the Skowhegan History House Museum & Research Center

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Stuart Kestenbaum,  Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021, will present a series of poems and talk about the process of making his work. He will also delve into the comparisons to other creative processes he uses. This 30 minute presentation will be followed by a 30 minute Q&A session. 

A Zoom link to the lecture will be sent the Monday prior to the lecture. 

Tickets are free with a suggested donation. Get your tickets here.