A Guide to Maine Museums

Colby College Museum of Art

The Colby College Museum of Art is a collecting and teaching museum located at 5600 Mayflower Hill, on the Colby College Campus, in Waterville, Maine. The Museum is part of the Bixler Art and Music Center, a building named after President J. Seelye Bixler (1942-1960) in honor of his support for the arts. The Museum strives to be a resource for Colby’s students, academic departments and interdisciplinary programs, and they also work to be of value to the Central Maine community, and to the global community. The Museum was founded in 1959 and now includes four wings with more than 28,000 square feet of exhibition space, and offers patrons access to more than 5,500 works. The museum specializes in American and contemporary works.

The Museum is home to a significant permanent collection and also typically displays five or more temporary exhibitions each year. These include currents, exhibitions that showcase the work of emerging and cutting-edge artists.

Lady in the Garden

The Museum’s permanent collection includes major American works by Gilbert Stuart, Winslow Homer, John Singleton Copley, Albert Bierstadt, Mary Cassatt and William Meritt Chase. Works from the modern movement include John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, George Bellows, and Rockwell Kent. The Museum also showcases contemporary works by Agnes Martine, Chuck Close, Sol LeWitt, Kara Walker, Dan Flavin, Elizabeth Murray, and Alex Katz.

The Museum is home to an impressive collection of works (numbering nearly 700) by Alex Katz, who gifted the collection to the Museum in 1992. Now, an 8,000 square foot wing houses his works. This wing is one of only a few museum wings in the country dedicated to the work of a living artist.

Taos, New Mexico

The permanent collection also includes the American Heritage Collection of Folk Art, 18th-century American portraits, primitive portraits and weathervanes, and work by American Impressionist painters. The collection also offers European prints, drawings and paintings, and special collections such as the Bernat Collection of Oriental Ceramics.

A popular set of prints by James McNeill Whistler and a collection of ancient Chinese ceramics, The Colville Collection of Early Chinese Art, are on long-term loan to the Museum.

The Joan Whitney Payson Collection of Impressionist and Post-impressionist paintings is showcased for one semester every other year.

The Museum welcomes volunteers. The Friends of Art and the Museum Docent program joins Colby students, faculty and alumni with members of the community to support the Museum.

The museum offers many programs including lectures, gallery talks and tours for both adults and children. Admission to all events is free and open to the public.

Admission to the Museum is free. The Museum is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 to 4 and Sundays from 12 to 4 and is closed for major holidays. Please call (207) 859-5600 for more information.