I like to joke that when a person finds themselves living in or around Boston, they are given a choice—to spend their summers to the north, in Maine, or to the south, on the Cape. And never the twain shall meet.
While I have spent time with and have much love for the summer offerings south of the 93 corridor, I gave my heart to Maine in 2010 with trips to the Midcoast and Acadia that have been repeated annually ever since. I could easily wax poetic here about the smells of balsam and blueberries, the way the salty fog rolls in and brines the cockled shores, the sunsets that splinter over Monhegan’s legendary island artist community or the moons that stare and glare and wink, alighting the imaginations of Winslow Homer, Katherine Bradford, and Ann Craven. But then I could, of course, just tell you to go watch Widow’s Bay, which, fine, is a fictional New England amalgamation but, like all things Saint Stephen King, is clearly Maine. Because while Vacationland has cinematic scenery and atmosphere aplenty, it also has a plethora of working artists and institutions you can encounter in real life, year-round.
Here at Boston Art Review we are privileged to work with artists and writers who call Maine home, including the marvelous Jorge S. Arango, who regularly covers the region on our pages. As a professional Maine interloper, however, I want to close out the summer with my own list of cultural must-dos in the hopes you’ll decide to make use of the long holiday weekend—or any time at all—by venturing into the northern wilds.
Installation view, “Abbey Williams: Fugue,” Center for Maine Contemporary Art, through September 20, 2026. Photo by Art Index. Courtesy of the artist, BROADWAY (New York), and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art.
All Art Roads Lead to Rockland (and Thomaston)
Over the past few years, the national art scene has caught onto the Rockland/Thomaston area with Craven’s restoration of a deconsecrated church and the subsequent summer offerings by New York gallery Karma. This year’s exhibition, “Outside,” was curated by White Columns’s Director Matthew Higgs and features works by more than thirty artists from the early twentieth century through today, including my personal favorite, an exquisite painting by Portland-based artist Kate Hargrave titled Birdwatchers (2026).
“Outside” closes on September 6, but whether you make it to Thomaston before or after Labor Day I recommend a visit to Interloc, an art space that has been spotlighting contemporary artists for nearly a decade. “As Sunlight,” a solo show by photographer Jonna McKone, is currently on view. When I stopped by in early August, I was especially taken with her Direct Earth series, a collection of analog chromogenic prints, a cameraless method that renders the subject—in this case plant material and soil—in vibrant reds, pinks, and blues.
A five-minute drive away in Rockland proper, you’ll find two of the region’s most beloved institutions, the Farnsworth Art Museum and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA). The former may be known for its world-class collections of the Wyeth Family and Louise Nevelson, but it also shows contemporary work, such as artist and DJ Benjamin Spalding’s “Go Bang!,” on view until September 20. Just down the road, CMCA is continuing its long history of showcasing outstanding contemporary talent (its Biennial has been going strong for nearly fifty years) and has found a fresh spark with the addition of Grant Wahlquist as curator. I’ve been particularly excited this season by Marc Swanson’s solo show “Death is Expensive” and the American debut of Abbey Williams’s five-channel video installation Fugue (2026), which sees the artist toppling classical columns. Having partially completed the work in York’s Surf Point residency, Williams engages with these symbols of white, Eurocentric authority as sites ripe for rupture, which—much like bodies—can be degraded by natural and systemic forces.
While museum hopping, don’t miss the chance to pop into Dowling Walsh Gallery, a two-story gem showing the likes of Emilie Stark-Menneg and Cig Harvey. Opening this weekend, Dominique Ostuni’s solo show “Would an Angel Apologize for Spilling Champagne?” will feature the Bowdoinham-based artist’s delicate hand-built porcelain sculptures with gilded accents and whimsical glazing.
Operating as something of a pipeline program for all of these organizations—and for the art world at large, is the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, a grantmaking and residency program that has been supporting artists of all disciplines under the helm of Founding Executive Director Donna McNeil. Just this past month, the Foundation awarded its $50,000 annual Visual Arts Award to Cuba-born, Cambridge-based artist and activist Tania Bruguera. Their newly opened campus, a bright, airy, and earthy development designed by Baird Architects, offers a quiet and contemplative space for artists to nurture their craft, and while it’s of course not always open to the public, the organization (or the artists themselves) do hold events and exhibitions both on campus and throughout the town. When I visited earlier this summer, resident artists Zaam Arif, Daniel Giordano, Chris Papa, and Ahndraya Parlato were preparing for “Shorties,” a regular series of mini artist talks held at nearby Luce Spirits and the entire cohort was getting ready to hang “Maine Course,” a weekend-long show that put their work in conversation with that of founders David Ellis and Joan Beauregard.
Installation view, “American Conversations,” Ogunquit Museum of American Art, 2026. Photo by Luc Demers. Courtesy of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art.
Unmissable Stops on the Way
Heading north to Rockland takes you past a wealth of art-viewing opportunities. Right past the border in Kittery, Buoy gallery is famous for its annual ARTPM (now in its seventeenth year), during which artists are invited to drop off a single work made during the month of February for inclusion in a treasure trove of a spring show. Stop in by September 26 to see a solo show by painter Alice Jones; then take the short drive to Ogunquit Museum of American Art to take in “American Conversations,” a routinely rotating arrangement of paired artworks that positions American masters like Philip Guston and Hughie Lee-Smith alongside contemporary artists, including some Boston figures, such as Joe Wardwell and Crystalle Lacouture. Stay on 95 N (or coastal Rt. 1 for bonus points) and you’ll quickly find yourself in Biddeford, where you can stop at one of two University of New England galleries (the other is in Portland and also worth a visit). On view until October 25, “Another Shore: Migration in Our Time” features work by Sachiko Akiyama, M. Annenberg, and Flynn Donovan.
A bit further on and an art destination in its own right, Portland rewards the culturally curious, provided you can tear yourself away from the food scene long enough. There are a number of commercial galleries worth stepping into, including Cove Street Arts and Elizabeth Moss Galleries (which also has a location in Falmouth), and the Portland Museum of Art never disappoints. But I especially love this city for its less-expected spaces, including Indigo Arts Alliance, a residency program for Black and Brown creatives that regularly holds events, and nonprofit/project spaces like SPACE gallery and Dunes. After a few years of quietly showing some of the country’s most exciting talent, Dunes is now hosting a large benefit group show at 200 Middle Street as they prepare to move into a larger permanent location later this year.
These spaces reward a love of the printed word in addition to visual art, and if that’s your jam (it is most especially my jam), you can’t leave town without stops at Bold Magazine Shop, which pulls the coolest printed matter from around the globe, and the Rabkin Foundation, which in addition to showcasing founders Leo and Dorothea Rabkin’s artwork, has been a force in supporting arts writers by offering consistent resources and support, including its annual Rabkin Prize. Recipients of the 2026 award—who will join the ranks of voices like Hrag Vartanian, TK Smith, and Cassie Packard—will be announced next week.
Finally, while it may be tempting to just zip on up the coast from Portland, I urge one more detour to visit the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, which consistently mounts stellar undersung shows. I’m especially excited about the upcoming exhibition “hyperVISIBLE: Building Community in Diaspora through Contemporary Art,” though if you visit earlier than November, you must be sure to catch Michael Goldblatt’s photographs of the Alex Health Clinic in Apartheid South Africa and the secret little Fra Angelico on view as part of its show “Legacies: Art from Renaissance Europe and the Americas.”
Installation view, “Holding the Light: Contemporary Wabanaki Photography,” Abbe Museum of Wabanaki Arts & Cultures, through October 2027.
If You Can Stray a Bit Further
If you’ve made it this far you can quite easily stop now and find your art appetites sated, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention just a few of the standout spaces you can find to the west and/or North of Rockland.
Just to the west in Lewiston, the newly opened Maine Museum of Innovation, Learning, and Labor (MILL) has a rotating exhibition gallery with a contemporary group show titled “A Common Bond: The Brick Journal” currently on view. Meanwhile, Lights Out Gallery has been supporting the arts community in Norway and throughout the state since 2019. While they don’t have any exhibitions currently on view, they are supporting a number of events, including the annual Norway Maine Arts Festival on September 12. Regardless of where you find yourself though, be sure to check out their fabulous documentary and video interview work. My personal favorite is this one with Daniel Minter.
Heading North will take you to Colby College Museum of Art, which, in addition to its massive Alex Katz collection, has a number of great shows on view, including “Imagining an Archipelago: Art from Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Their Diasporas,” featuring works by more than forty artists. By now you’ll find yourself quite a bit inland, but head back east toward the coast and the Parsonage Gallery in Searsport, which will be opening “Becoming Ocean,” a show exhibiting artists Celeste Roberge and Sophie Anna Gibbings, this weekend.
Finally, take yourself all the way up to Mount Desert and you’ll find one of the most special spaces on this list. Situated in the charming seaside town Bar Harbor, the Abbe Museum focuses exclusively on art and cultural artifacts by Wabanaki peoples. In addition to their probing Semiquincentennial exhibition, “In the Shadow of the Eagle,” the museum is also presenting the work of eight contemporary Wabanaki photographers with “Holding the Light.”
And if you’ve made it this far, stay a night and catch the sunrise over Cadillac Mountain, the first spot the sun touches in the United States, from October to March, before it goes on to light the artist studios, galleries, and residencies throughout all of Maine and beyond.
