Dates:
Location:
Halford Gallery, Bernard and Barbro Osher GallerySelected Works
Sear's Gallager, Crowsnest, Monhegan 1892, watercolor on paper. Monhegan Museum of Art & History. Gift of Remak Ramsay.
Mary King Longfellow, [Untitled], ca. 1900, watercolor, Monhegan Museum of Art & History.
Rockwell Kent, Sun, Manana, Monhegan, 1907, oil on canvas, ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Museum Purchase with Funds Donated Anonymously.
Lynne Mapp Drexler, Evergreen, 1980, oil on canvas. ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Museum Purchase, Barbara Cooney Porter Fund.
Barbara Petter Putnam, Monhegan-5, print on Mura Kaji (a Thai Kozo paper). ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Museum Purchase.
About
With its rugged shoreline, magnificent Cathedral Woods, and rustic fishing village, Monhegan Island in the Gulf of Maine has long been a haven for artists drawn to the splendor of its ocean vistas and picturesque wildlands and for ecologists fascinated by its complex natural history. Over the last two centuries, artists and photographers have observed pastureland recolonized by white spruce, those white spruce devastated by parasitic dwarf mistletoe infestation, and, today, deciduous trees—birch, aspen and maple—coming to dominate declining white spruce woodlands. Scientists, too, have documented change on Monhegan, drawing upon the methodologies of forest ecology to describe what came before and to elucidate mechanisms shaping the trajectories of forest succession.
The extraordinary natural resilience displayed by the Monhegan Wildlands is only possible thanks to conservation-minded islanders, no one more so than Theodore Edison, who acquired much of the island outside of the village and conveyed it back to island residents with the formation of the Monhegan Associates. The broad arc of events on Monhegan—human settlement, the formation and abandonment of pastureland, forest recovery, and the critical importance of land conservation—are mirrored elsewhere along the Maine coast and the greater New England region. The story of Monhegan Island, however, is uniquely well told by artists, ecologists, and community members alike.
Monhegan’s history offers lessons for us all. This exhibition brings together artworks, objects and representations of ecological inquiry, and historical documents and photographs to chart forest conversion and recovery on the island. Milestone stewardship decisions animate the timeline as they set the island on the course to its present state of incipient deciduous stands set off against stately old-growth conifer forests. When given the opportunity, New England forests exhibit a remarkable ability to renew themselves; this is perhaps nowhere better demonstrated than Monhegan Island.
This exhibition is co-curated by Barry Logan, Samuel S. Butcher Professor in the Natural Sciences and Chair of Biology Department, ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ, Jennifer Pye, Director of the Monhegan Museum of Art & History, and Frank Goodyear, Co-Director of the ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Museum of Art. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated published by Rizzoli Electa.
Generous funding support has been provided by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, Peter J. Grua ’76 and Mary G. O’Connell ’76, Steve Marrow '83 and Dianne Pappas P21, the Elizabeth B.G. Hamlin Fund, and the Stevens L. Frost Endowment Fund.
Read the press release.
Programming
“Plausible Deep Time Landscapes and the Art of Paleoart” with Kirk Johnson
For the last several decades, Kirk Johnson, the Sant Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, has been collaborating with artists to imagine and render specific animals, plants, and places as they would have appeared millions of years ago. Through the lens of time, any place has been many places. The human eye is tuned to see animals as individuals and plants as background and the result is that many expressions of paleoart are biased toward the animals and not the places. This creates a false sense that we understand past landscapes.
Recorded January 23, 2025 at ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ.
“From Lighthouse and Signal Station and Cove to Head: Four Centuries of Mapping Monhegan” with Libby Bischof
In this illustrated lecture, visual historian Libby Bischof discusses four centuries of mapping and charting Monhegan Island, a one and 3/4 mile-long island located 10 miles out to sea. The talk offers a glimpse into how the island has been mapped over time, with an emphasis on fishing, marine life, walking trails, wildlands, artist's haunts, and, over the past century, tourism.
Recorded January 24, 2025 at ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ.
"Sustaining the Community and Wildlands": A Conversation with Doug Boynton and David Foster
This conversation features David Foster, a lead organizer of the Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities conservation effort and director emeritus of the Harvard Forest, and Doug Boynton, a longtime resident of Monhegan Island dedicated to its sustainability through stewardship of the Wildlands through the Monhegan Associates, the Monhegan Lobster Conservation Area, and the Monhegan Island Sustainable Community Association.
Recorded January 24, 2025 at ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ.
Press
The Boston Globe Travel Briefs, November 28, 2024
"Interdisciplinary Exhibition Highlights Ecological Change on a Maine Island," ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Magazine, December 16, 2024
Portland Press Herald, January 17, 2025
The ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Orient, January 24, 2025
"The Monhegan Wildlands," American Art Review, Winter 2025
"Change of Scene: A new exhibit paints a picture of Monhegan's evolving landscape," Down East Magazine, March 2025
Portland Press Herald, March 14, 2025
Maine Home + Design, March 2025
The Christian Science Monitor, March 19, 2025