Maine Memory Network

Holding up the Sky: Wabanaki people, culture, history, and art

Learn about Native diplomacy and obligation by exploring 13,000 years of Wabanaki residence in Maine through 17th century treaties, historic items, and contemporary artworks—from ash baskets to high fashion. Wabanaki voices contextualize present-day relevance and repercussions of 400 years of shared histories between Wabanakis and settlers to their region.

From French Canadians to Franco-Americans

French Canadians who emigrated to the Lewiston-Auburn area faced discrimination as children and adults -- such as living in "Little Canada" tenements and being ridiculed for speaking French -- but also adapted to their new lives and sustained many cultural traditions.

A City Awakes: Arts and Artisans of Early 19th Century Portland

Portland's growth from 1786 to 1860 spawned a unique social and cultural environment and fostered artistic opportunity and creative expression in a broad range of the arts, which flowered with the increasing wealth and opportunity in the city.

Gifts From Gluskabe: Maine Indian Artforms

According to legend, the Great Spirit created Gluskabe, who shaped the world of the Native People of Maine, and taught them how to use and respect the land and the resources around them. This exhibit celebrates the gifts of Gluskabe with Maine Indian art works from the early nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries.

Drawing Together: Art of the Longfellows

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is best know as a poet, but he also was accomplished in drawing and music. He shared his love of drawing with most of his siblings. They all shared the frequent activity of drawing and painting with their children. The extended family included many professional as well as amateur artists, and several architects.

Amazing! Maine Stories

These stories -- that stretch from 1999 back to 1759 -- take you from an amusement park to the halls of Congress. There are inventors, artists, showmen, a railway agent, a man whose civic endeavors helped shape Portland, a man devoted to the pursuit of peace and one known for his military exploits, Maine's first novelist, a woman who recorded everyday life in detail, and an Indian who survived a British attack.

400 years of New Mainers

Immigration is one of the most debated topics in Maine. Controversy aside, immigration is also America's oldest tradition, and along with religious tolerance, what our nation was built upon. Since the first people--the Wabanaki--permitted Europeans to settle in the land now known as Maine, we have been a state of immigrants.

Music in Maine - MAKE

"… instructions on Church-music, in order to aid the Native Americans to sing the praises of the Lord…but also to preserve several unwritten national…"

Music in Maine - Community Music

"… and musician Benoit Bourque through the Maine Arts Commission’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program."

Northern Threads: Penobscot mocassins

A themed exhibit vignette within "Northern Threads, Part I," about telling stories through Indigenous clothing, featuring an essay by Jennifer Sapiel Neptune (Penobscot.)

Hiking, Art and Science: Portland's White Mountain Club

In 1873, a group of men, mostly from Portland, formed the second known hiking club in the U.S., the White Mountain Club of Portland, to carry out their scientific interests, their love of hiking and camaraderie, and their artistic interests in painting and drawing the features of several of the White Mountains.

Music in Maine - Opera, Orchestras and Stages

"… world-premiered at the Collins Center for the Arts, University of Maine, Orono and performed as part of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra’s Ode to Joy…"

Music in Maine - Rock and Roll, Punk, and Elvis

"… anti-establishment philosophy that extends into art, fashion, and life. One of Maine’s earliest punk bands, The Same Band of Brunswick, held a…"

State of Mind: Becoming Maine

The history of the region now known as Maine did not begin at statehood in 1820. What was Maine before it was a state? How did Maine separate from Massachusetts? How has the Maine we experience today been shaped by thousands of years of history?

Music in Maine - Community and School Marching Bands

"… and meeting the audiences’ expectations of what Native peoples looked like. Band members wore typical Penobscot-style upright feather headdresses…"

Music in Maine - Music and Television

"… national tv shows featuring teens and music like American Bandstand, Astor’s performance skits included music, dance, and comedy routines."

Music in Maine - Music Makers

"He played clarinet with the American Cadet Band, and violin with the American Cadet Band Orchestra. Soren Bruns' Violin, ca."

Music in Maine - Radio Cowboys and Country Music

"… Country and bluegrass music emerged in the American South, a blend of English folk songs, Scots-Irish fiddle and dance music, sacred music, and…"

Music in Maine - Country Music

"… 1966 and1968, he joined the Buck Owens All American Music Show and appeared at the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, and later as a regular member of…"

Music in Maine - Sacred Music

"… ran Tikva Records, a label specializing in Jewish American recordings in Manhattan, New York from the 1940s to the 1970s."

Bookplates Honor Annie Louise Cary

A summer resident of Wayne collected more than 3,000 bookplates to honor Maine native and noted opera singer Annie Louise Cary and to support the Cary Memorial Library.

Le Théâtre

Lewiston, Maine's second largest city, was long looked upon by many as a mill town with grimy smoke stacks, crowded tenements, low-paying jobs, sleazy clubs and little by way of refinement, except for Bates College. Yet, a noted Québec historian, Robert Rumilly, described it as "the French Athens of New England."

Lillian Nordica: Farmington Diva

Lillian Norton, known as Nordica, was one of the best known sopranos in America and the world at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. She was a native of Farmington.

Music in Maine - Music in Maine

"Music in Maine Music is something we share as humans—non-verbal forms of storytelling and expressions of beauty and emotions through sound."