A Guide to Maine Museums

Bates College Museum of Art at the Olin Arts Center

The Bates College Museum of Art is located in the Olin Arts Center on the Bates College Campus at 75 Russell Street, in Lewiston, Maine.

The Museum was founded in 1955 as the Treat Gallery with the generous gift of The Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection, from Marsden Hartley’s niece, Norma Berger. Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), a Lewiston native, is considered to be one of the most important American modernist painters, and one of the most renowned artists from Maine. The collection includes drawings, oil sketches, personal photographs, and writings. Hartley and his work led several other artists, including Carl Sprinchorn, to Maine to paint. The Bates collection also features work by Robert Indiana, who paid homage to Hartley through a body of work called, “The Hartley Elegies.”

Beyond Hartley, the Museum continues to focus on Maine artists. They also concentrate on works on paper: Old Master prints; European works by artists such as Georges Rouault, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso; American works by John Marin, Mary Cassatt, John Sloan, and George Bellows; contemporary works by Anne Harris, Robert Indiana, Charlie Hewitt, and Alison Saar. They also offer patrons a collection of contemporary African and Chinese photography, a selection of pre-Columbian sculpture and ceramics, and Japanese woodblock prints.

Olin Arts Center - Bates College

The Museum is also home to William Pope. L, a well known contemporary performance artist. William Pope. L (1955) is an American visual artist, but is best known for his performance art and interventionist public art. He was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial and is a Guggenheim Fellow. Pope. L was a lecturer of Theater and Rhetoric at Bates from 1990 to 2006. While there, he directed a production of A Raisin In the Sun, in which he cast both Caucasian and African-American actors as members of the same family.

The Museum organizes three original exhibitions each year and hosts an annual exhibition by art majors. The museum also features a student-curated exhibition called Students in the Vault.

Bates College Museum of Art exhibits

The Museum recently renamed the Upper Gallery the Bates Gallery, which is devoted to changing exhibitions, and created three new spaces in the Lower Gallery: the Collection Gallery (for long-term exhibitions), the Underground Synergy Seminar Space (a project, viewing, and study space), and the 150 Art Reader Stairwell.

Bates College Museum of Art welcomes 20,000 visitors each year, and frequently hosts special events and lectures. The Museum strives to foster a “creative community” by creating collaborative programs with area schools, arts organizations, and the Lewiston-Auburn community.

In support of the Museum’s attempts to redefine the art museum’s role today, they have recently received a generous gift, a “synergy” fund dedicated to “the development of education, with focus on the synchronistic parallels in time and space across the subject matter of liberal arts.” These funds will allow the Museum to continue to explore new territory as it organizes exhibitions and educates its patrons. They hope to create an intimate space where art can be fully engaged, where more questions are asked than are answered.

Admission is free and the museum is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 to 5. Call (207) 786-6158 to verify that the museum is open before you visit.