Events at Member Institutions

The holiday season will be celebrated with Victorian Christmas at Penobscot Marine Museum this year on Friday, December 4^th and Saturday, December 5^th.  The ship captain’s house will be open to the public with each room decorated for a Victorian Christmas by community groups and businesses, including the Congregational Church Women’s Fellowship Group, Searsport Historical Society, Searsport Beautification Committee, Blue Jacket Shipcrafters, Bangor Savings Bank and Searsport Antique Mall.  There will be refreshments, music performed by boatbuilder Ralph Stanley and his fiddle group, and volunteers from Searsport’s Carver Library will be reading from 19 Christmas favorites. 

On Friday night the Museum Store will host a “Meet the Maine Authors” party in celebration of the annual Town of Searsport Tree Lighting party on Crescent.  The museum’s annual gingerbread competition “Maritime Christmas Gingerbread By the Sea” will be on display and refreshments will be served.

Victorian Christmas at Penobscot Marine Museum, 2 Church Street, Searsport, is Friday, December 4^th, 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm, and Saturday, December 5, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.  Admission is free.

About Penobscot Marine Museum

Penobscot Marine Museum is twelve buildings on three acres in the historic seacoast village of Searsport, Maine.  Check the website for activities and events.  Exhibits include hands-on activities for children and adults, as well as a ship captain's house, marine paintings, scrimshaw, 19^th century Chinese and Japanese pottery, paintings and textiles, historic Maine boats, a fisheries exhibit, and an heirloom vegetable garden.  The museum is open seven days a week, Memorial Day weekend through the third weekend in October.  The Museum Store and Museum Framer have winter hours.  For more information go to www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org or call the Visitors Center 207-548-0334 or Administrative Offices at 207-548-2529.

Join faculty and students in Colby’s Creative Writing Program as they read works written in response to works on view in the Museum galleries.

Cosponsored by the Creative Writing Program, the Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the Museum.

For more information please contact Mirken Coordinator of Education and Public Programs Matt Timme. (mrtimme@colby.edu | 207.859.5613) or visit colby.edu/museum

Noontime Art Talk: Icicles on the Nose, Frost in the Studio: Whistler and the Weather

Lunder Consortium for Whistler Studies Fellow Justin McCann will discuss how Whistler battled the elements to capture evocative atmospheric conditions in his paintings and pastels of London and Venice.

For more information please contact Mirken Coordinator of Education and Public Programs Matt Timme. (mrtimme@colby.edu | 207.859.5613) or visit colby.edu/museum

In keeping with the Thanksgiving theme, on November 18, at 7;00 p.m.  the Rumford Historical Society will feature Chuck Halsey, Wildlife Biologist from Maine's Dept. of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife.  He will discuss the history of the demise and recovery of the wild turkey.  Program to be held in the Auditorium of the Rumford Town Hall.

Rumford Historical Society

231 Eaton Hill Rd., Rumford, ME

207-369-9288

A dedication of the monument to Lt. Joseph Bragdon will be held Nov 7, 2015 at 10am at the Herrick Cemetery on Village Drive, near Main St (US 15) in Corinth, Maine.  Lt. Bragdon was an early settler in the Mass. township that became Corinth, Maine.  Hosts: American Legion Post 115, Corinth Historical Society, and the Corinth Cemetery Trustees.  The public is invited.

The Tate House Museum is hosting cemetery tours of the 18^th Century Stroudwater Burying Ground on Saturday, October 17^th and 24^th from noon to 4PM, on the hour, with the last tour starting at 3PM.  The picturesque cemetery, located along the Stroudwater River, is the final resting place for many prominent members of the proud Stroudwater community.Museum volunteer “specters” will portray some of the cemetery’s more celebrated residents, telling their colorful historical tales – some quite tragic, and some with a dash of soap opera to them.  George and Mary Tate are ready to tell their stories, along with the first woman in Maine to have the flags lowered to half staff upon her death, and many more.  Please join the Tate House Museum for an afternoon of spirited fun, entertainment, and education.

Ticket prices are $12.00 for adults and $6.00 for children 12 and under.  Tickets and fall bake sale treats will be available in the gift shop, 1267 Westbrook Street, Portland, ME.  Proceeds help support the preservation of the Tate House.

The Tate House, built in 1755, was the home of Captain George Tate, senior mast agent to the British Royal Navy.  The Tate House, a National Historic Landmark, stands as a physical reminder of the economic importance of the colonial mast trade and its role in the American Revolution.

For More Information Contact the Tate House at 774-6177 or email info@tatehouse.org

Oldest Film Shot in Maine to be Shown at Penobscot Marine Museum’s Annual  History Conference

 A clip from the oldest film shot in Maine will be shown during Wish You Were Here: Communicating Maine’s Unique Sense of Place, Penobscot Marine Museum’s 2015 History Conference.  The Conference this year brings together Northeast Historic Film, Maine Folklife Center, and historians and writers Jay Davis, David Andrews, William Bunting and Kevin Johnson to discuss Maine’s unusual sense of place and how it has been communicated, preserved or changed over the last one hundred years. 

 The oldest known film taken in Maine was shot in 1901, and a clip of this historic film will be shown by Northeast Historic Film’s new Executive Director Brook Minner in her talk on preserving Maine’s moving image history.  Maine Folklife Center’s Katrina Wynn will present audio clips of stories told by Mainers on topics ranging from logging to Wabanaki culture, and discuss how preserving Maine’s oral histories adds to its sense of place.

The vibrant photographic portrait of Maine created by Peggy McKenna (1947 – 2014) in her work for Down East, Waldo Independent, and Republican Journal will be discussed by former newspaper editor Jay Davis.  For more information on the History Conference or to purchase tickets, go to www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org or call 548-2529.  Wish You Were Here: Communicating Maine’s Unique Sense of Place will be held at University of Maine’s Hutchinson Center in Belfast, Maine onSaturday, October 24, 8:00 am to 2:30 pm.

 About Penobscot Marine Museum

Penobscot Marine Museum is in the historic seacoast village of Searsport, Maine.  Check the website for activities and events.  Exhibits include hands-on activities for children and adults, as well as a ship captain's house, marine paintings, scrimshaw, 19^thcentury Chinese and Japanese pottery, paintings and textiles, historic Maine boats, a fisheries exhibit, and an heirloom vegetable garden.  The museum is open seven days a week, Memorial Day weekend through the third weekend in October.  For more information go to www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org or call the Visitors Center 207-548-0334 or Administrative Offices at 207-548-2529.

On October 21, at 7:00 p.m. in Rumford Town Hall Auditorium, a round-table discussion of the old ferries and bridges which have been a part of the region's transportation history will be held by the Rumford Historical Society.  Eight residents from Hanover to Dixfield areas will facilitate the discussion.  Map for discussion will be provided, courtesy of the Androscoggin Watershed Council.

Rumford Historical Society

231 Eaton Hill Rd., Rumford, ME

207-369-9288

The men of Deer Isle have been famous for their maritime skills for well over a hundred years.  In 1895 and 1899 the America’s Cup was won by all-Deer Isle crews, the first and last time in history a single town supplied an entire crew for the race.  At Penobscot Marine Museum on Thursday, October 8 at 7:00 pm, anthropologist William Haviland will discuss why the men of Deer Isle developed such an excellent reputation and were sought after as crewmen especially for the big steam yachts of the early 20^th century.  Haviland’s book on the subject, Floating Palaces: America's Queens of the Sea which he wrote with Deer Isle native Barbara (Greenlaw) Britton, was published this year.  Admission is free. 

William Haviland is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Vermont.  Growing up he spent summers on Deer Isle and is now a full-time resident.  He is on the boards of the Deer Isle-Stonington Historical Society and the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor. 

Floating Palaces: America's Queens of the Sea is part of Penobscot Marine Museum’s Boat Talk Series.  The talk will take place onThursday, October 8, 7:00 pm, at Douglas and Margaret Carver Memorial Art Gallery, 11 Church Street, Searsport, Maine. Admission is free.

About Penobscot Marine Museum
Penobscot Marine Museum is in the historic seacoast village of Searsport, Maine.  Eight of its twelve exhibit buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places.  Check the website for daily activities and events. The museum is open seven days a week, Memorial Day weekend through the third weekend in October.  For more information go to www.penobscotmarinemuseum.orgor call the Visitors Center 207-548-0334 or Administrative Offices at 207-548-2529.

As part of the Maine Photo Project (www.mainephotoproject.org), the L.C.Bates Museum will offer an exhibition of Maine artist/photographers who focus on natural history both in the museum setting and out in nature. The exhibition runs from Tuesday, September 15, 2015 and run until December 30, 2015. The exhibition includes artist/photographers Gary Green, Rosamond Purcell, Lauren Shaw, Leslie Bowman, Thomas Birtwhistle, John Stetson, Lisa Ennis, Christian Farnsworth, Jim Nickelson, nataliya slinkoand Michael Grillo.  Each artist has created a unique image that depicts their personal vision of nature, but also speaks to the viewer. The artists’ statements on labels express the stories behind their work. What Christian Farnsworth writes of his work speaks for many of the photographers. He writes, “My photographic inquiry explores the various ways we perceive the landscape.  I hope to render the photograph in a way that is more aligned with our own visual perceptions, while subsequently satisfying our human penchant to categorize the world through multiple perspectives.” “I employ the camera as a gathering tool, varying position and movement to complement our human response to visual stimuli.”

 Image: Thomas Birtwistle, Heron