Maine Museums Day was March 29, 2016!
All afternoon, the Hall of Flags at the Maine State House was filled with museum professionals connecting with legislators and other state workers. I am not ashamed to admit we lured them with bells and candy.
Maine Museums Day! Photo by Meg Winikates of the New England Museum Association.
But there were some other table displays that were way cooler than mine. L.C. Bates Museum had a stuffed raccoon, and the Telephone Museum in Ellsworth brought an antique telephone booth! Just take a look at the list of exhibiting museums, and you’ll get a sense of the depth and breadth of our cultural resources here in Maine:
- Telephone Museum, Ellsworth
- Cole Land Transportation Museum, Bangor
- Tate House, Portland
- Portland Museum of Art, Portland
- Yarmouth Historical Society, Yarmouth
- Maine Maritime Museum, Bath
- Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine, Augusta
- L.C. Bates Museum, Hinckley
- Brick Store Museum, Kennebunk
- Bangor Historical Society, Bangor
- Abbe Museum, Bar Harbor
- Washburn-Norlands Living History Center, Livermore
- Stanley Museum, Kingfield
- Seal Cove Auto Museum, Seal Cove
- Maine Historical Society, Portland
- Presque Isle Historical Society, Presque Isle
- Ski Museum of Maine, Kingfield
- Wiscasset, Waterville, and Farmington Railway Museum, Alna
Click to watch my video presentation about Maine museum collaborations!
Click through to read more about CERC’s map project in the November 2015 Maine Archives and Museums newsletter!
One amazing example of that–which is in the video, above–is CERC: Maine, Maine’s Cultural Emergency Resource Coalition, an alliance of state agencies and statewide organizations dedicated to helping Maine’s cultural institutions prepare and connect in the case of a disaster. They’ve teamed up with state and national museum census efforts to develop an interactive map of every museum in Maine–and we’ve got a lot of them!
I mention CERC specifically because we were sharing the same table–you can just see their handy refrigerator magnets in the photo up top! You can read more about the important work they’re doing in the November issue of the Maine Archives and Museums newsletter (left).
Space was tight in the old Hall of Flags, which seems pretty big when it’s empty, but gets a lot smaller when it has to hold the awesomeness of a stateful of museums. So we were pretty squeezed-together at our table. Even so, we had room for brochures, fliers, books, and more related to these past Maine museum exhibition collaborations:
- State of Fiber, 2004
- Maine Print Project, 2006
- Maine Folk Art Trail, 2008
- Maine Drawing Project, 2011
- Maine Civil War Trail, 2013
- Maine Photo Project, 2015
- The Yankee Ingenuity Museum Trail: www.yankeeingenuitymuseumtrail.org
- Downeast Fisheries Trail: www.downeastfisheriestrail.org
- The Langlais Art Trail: www.langlaisarttrail.org
- Experience Maritime Maine: www.experiencemaritimemaine.org
- The Maine Art Museum Trail: www.maineartmuseums.org
- Maine Land Transportation Trail: www.railwayvillage.org/visit/maine-land-transportation-trail
- The Gems of Route 26: www.gemsof26.com
It was a fantastic day, thanks to the efforts of co-organizers the New England Museum Association and Maine Archives and Museums, as well as the day’s sponsors. Great exhibits, great people, great conversation–and great speakers as well! It was especially a thrill to hear Maine State Historian Earle Shettleworth praise the Maine Curators’ Forum and others for their hard work and vision in making Maine a nexus for cultural collaboration.
Go #teammuseum!
P.S. Click here for some great pictures from NEMA’s social media sites!
Jessica Skwire Routhier 