Coming Soon...

Are you curious about what is coming up next at the Abbe Museum?

You've heard us talk about how so many of our exhibitions are closing soon, but do you know what will fill our galleries next?

Here are some sneak peeks to get you excited about what you can soon visit at the Abbe Museum.  Stay tuned for updates on these exciting exhibits, coming to you in 2012 & 2013!

Up Next in the Community Gallery...

...replacing The 2012 Waponahki Student Art Show, and opening in November:

N'tolonapemk: Our Relatives' Place

 Learn about the history of this site from differing perspectives, 

including archaeologists and Passamaquoddy Tribal Historian, Donald Soctomah.
Click here to read the publication, N'tolonapemk: 
An Ancient Native American Village on Meddybemps Lake, Maine

Up Next in the Main Gallery...

...replacing Indians and Rusticators, and opening in early Spring 2013:

Wabanaki Guides

The next major exhibit at the Abbe Museum, which will replace the Abbe’s award-winning, Indians and Rusticators: Wabanakis and Summer Visitors on Mount Desert Island 1840s-1920s, is entitled Wabanaki Guides. This exhibit will focus on the legacy of Wabanaki people serving as guides for European and American explorers, cartographers, tourists, and artists from the European contact era in the 1600s, to the present day. The exhibit will shine a spotlight on how Wabanaki knowledge of the land and waterways has influenced visitors and illustrates how this legacy is linked to economic sustainability for the tribes, tourism and environmental sustainability for the state of Maine.
 

The exhibit, set in the Main Gallery, will be designed as a guided canoe trip along a Maine river, with portages along the way where one can pause on the river bank and learn about the various aspects a guide had to consider when planning and executing a trip and what to expect along the way (see enclosed exhibit illustrations). Themes throughout the exhibit will focus on mapping, tracking, tourism and economics. Stories and historic accounts will be shared from various viewpoints, including those from Wabanaki guides, Henry David Thoreau and Joseph Treat, to name a few. Throughout the exhibit, the Wabanaki names for places will be used and translated into English to show us how their words so accurately capture the essence of a place, bodies of water or wildlife, and how their deep connection to this place remains. The exhibit will include hands-on activities for children, a gallery hunt with maps to follow, riddles to decode and flip games with questions and answers.

Up Next in the Main Gallery...

...replacing Transcending Traditions, and opening in late spring 2013:

The 2013 Waponahki Student Art Show

These images are yet to be created!  Good luck to the students as they start their new school year, we can't wait to see what beautiful artworks will result from your creativity this year!

Up Next in the Circle of the Four Directions...

...using this special space to display the traveling exhibition, coming to the Abbe from the 

National Museum of the American Indian in early summer 2013:

IndiVisible

Photo Caption from the National Museum of the American Indian:   

Comanche family, early 1900s

Here is a family from the Comanche Nation located in southwestern Oklahoma. The elder man in Comanche traditional clothing is Ta-Ten-e-quer. His wife, Ta-Tat-ty, also wears Comanche clothing. Their niece (center) is Wife-per, also known as Frances E. Wright. Her father was a Buffalo Soldier (an African American cavalryman) who deserted and married into the Comanches. Henry (center left) and Lorenzano (center right) are the sons of Frances, who married an African American man.  Courtesy Sam DeVenney  Learn more from the Smithsonian's website to accompany the exhibit.

As quoted from the exhibition's website:

Within the fabric of American identity is woven a story that has long been invisible—the lives and experiences of people who share African American and Native American ancestry.

 African and Native peoples came together in the Americas.  Over centuries, African Americans and Native Americans created shared histories, communities, families, and ways of life.  Prejudice, laws, and twists of history have often divided them from others, yet African-Native American people were united in the struggle against slavery and sipossession, and then for self-determination and freedom.

For African-Native Americans, their double heritage is truly indivisible.

"The exhibition IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas is a collaboration between the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service (SITES).

And over the course of the winter...

...Sieur de Monts will be undergoing renovation and a new exhibit will open in Summer 2013!  

(Don't worry, your old favorites will be there too.)

We hope you enjoy!