Museums look at the legacies of 2 Maine art colonies

April 28, 2019

Exhibitions about Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and Slab City are on display in Portland and Rockland, respectively.

For two centuries, artists from across America have made the journey to Maine in search of inspiration from nature and camaraderie among each other. They came in bunches, establishing art colonies famously in Ogunquit and Monhegan, and trekking inland to Mount Katahdin.

This spring, two museums in Maine will originate exhibitions that expand on the art legacies of two lesser-known but influential art communities that grew out of the possibilities and hope of post-World War II America: Haystack, the crafts school in Deer Isle, and Lincolnville, the midcoast community that is the seasonal home of Alex Katz and other artists.

BLURRING THE BOUNDARIES

On May 24, the Portland Museum of Art opens an exhibition about the early days of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, exploring the roots of the Deer Isle school and what co-curator Diana Greenwold calls “the pivotal imprint” of Haystack on mid-century American culture. “In the Vanguard: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 1950-1969” will be the first major museum exhibition that focuses on the school and its influence, and will make the case that Haystack and the artists associated with it have been central to blurring the boundaries between art and craft, as well as key players in the national discussion about the topic.

The exhibition will include works of art by leaders of the mid-century studio craft movement like glass artist Dale Chihuly, metalsmith Robert Ebendorf and textile artist Anni Albers, who came to Maine in Haystack’s early years and helped establish the attitude and culture that enabled Haystack to become an influential art school. Haystack is distinguished because of the experimental nature of the art that’s made there, the communal living environment of the artists and teachers, and its setting on the Maine coast.

The exhibition will include textiles, ceramics, glass, metalwork, paintings and prints, and will travel to Cranbook Art Museum in Michigan after closing in Portland on Sept. 8.

The exhibition tells the Haystack story with art that demonstrates the collaborative nature of the school, which began inland in Montville in 1950 and relocated to its current and remote home in the community known as Sunshine on Deer Isle in 1961. Also on view as part of “In the Vanguard” will be a trove of archival material, including correspondence, photographs and early brochures that chronicle the school’s growth and development. Most of that material has never been gathered together, and will be published in a catalog that will help tell the Haystack story, Greenwold said.