With two locations in the beautiful coastal town of Bar Harbor, the Abbe Museum celebrates the heritage of Maine’s four Native American tribes: the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Micmac and Maliseet people, collectively known as the Wabanaki or “People of the Dawn.” The Abbe opened a new, year-round museum in downtown Bar Harbor in fall 2001, complementing its historic, seasonal museum at Sieur de Monts Spring in Acadia National Park that has delighted visitors since 1928. Visitors at both museums learn about 10,000 years of life in Maine, based on the archaeological record and the Abbe’s archaeological collections. The spacious new museum also explores many other facets of Wabanaki cultures and history, with a special emphasis on the enduring traditions of Native people living in Maine today.
Located across from Bar Harbor’s village green, the new museum has received national recognition for its exhibitions and engaging, contemporary design. Here, at the downtown museum, the Abbe presents a variety of educational programs, including art and craft workshops and demonstrations, music, and poetry readings by Wabanaki artists. Children’s programs focus on hands-on activities that engage young people in exploring archaeology and Wabanaki cultures. The new Abbe’s award-winning Circle of the Four Directions is a soaring circular gallery that reflects the importance of the circle in Native cultures. It houses exhibits and is used for programs such as flute music, drumming, singing and poetry readings.
Celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, the Abbe was founded by Dr. Robert Abbe, a prominent New York surgeon and beloved summer resident of Bar Harbor who spent his last years acquiring archaeological artifacts made by the area’s first people and establishing a museum to house them. The original Abbe at Sieur de Monts Spring, envisioned by Dr. Abbe as a “gem” in the woods of Acadia National Park, was one of a number of privately owned trailside museums developed in conjunction with the national park system. Within a few years after the Abbe opened, it expanded its collections to include historic materials and especially crafts of the Wabanaki people. In recent decades the Abbe has also developed a distinguished collection of contemporary arts and crafts by Maine Native Americans.
The Wabanaki are especially well known for the excellence of their basketry, using the traditional materials of brown ash splints and sweetgrass. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Wabanaki artisans developed new “fancy basket” styles to appeal to the Victorian tastes of summer visitors to Maine. Handed down through generations of basketmakers, these designs utilize an array of special weaves that included ribbon, porcupine and curly weaves. Today the Abbe holds the largest and best documented collection of Wabanaki basketry in any museum. Summer workshops give adults the opportunity to learn the craft from master basketmakers. The Museum Shops at both museums offer an excellent selection of high quality baskets and other Wabanaki crafts such as birchbark items, root clubs, walking sticks, dolls and jewelry.
Among current Abbe exhibitions is The Basket Room: The Anne Molloy Howells Collection, an extraordinary collection of more than 400 Native baskets of the Northeast, on view through December 28, 2003. Layers of Time: 75 Years of Archaeology at the Abbe Museum continues through 2004. A permanent exhibition of archaeological artifacts is on view seasonally at the historic Abbe at Sieur de Monts Spring. In May 2004, the Abbe will open the exhibition Words, Stories and Moccasins: The Frank T. Siebert Collection of Native American Art, featuring Penobscot materials assembled by an eminent linguist.
