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On December 12, the º¬Ðß²ÝÑо¿ÊÒ Museum of Art (BCMA), in collaboration with the Monhegan Museum of Art & History, will open Art, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island: The Monhegan Wildlands, an exhibition that looks anew at the history of Monhegan Island, Maine. The exhibition illuminates the island’s extraordinary journey of environmental transformation and resilience from the close of the most recent ice age to the contemporary period, as seen through the eyes of the artists who depict the terrain and the scientists who study Monhegan’s dynamic ecology.

The exhibition features a wide range artworks—from paintings by modernist artists such as Rockwell Kent and Edward Hopper, to contemporary pieces by Lynne Drexler and Barbara Putnam—alongside historical artifacts such as bone harpoon points and other objects created by Indigenous inhabitants, documents from the island’s history, and scientific research on elements such as the human introduction, and subsequent removal, of first sheep and then deer. After its presentation at the BCMA, the exhibition will travel next summer to the Monhegan Museum of Art & History.

As part of the collaboration, the BCMA has commissioned a new series of photographs of Monhegan from photographer Accra Shepp, which serve as a throughline across the exhibition. Known for his documentary-style photography that focuses on social and environmental narratives, Shepp employed his 4x5 view camera to create a new series of panoramic photographs that capture the island’s ecology and its people. Shepp has also contributed an afterword about his experiences on Monhegan to the exhibition catalogue.

“New York artist Rockwell Kent first visited Monhegan Island in 1905, just as more than a half century of intensive sheep farming was coming to an end, so the landscape he saw and depicted was in the earliest stages of recovery from its greatest ecological disturbance in recorded history,” said Barry Logan, the Samuel S. Butcher Professor in the Natural Sciences at º¬Ðß²ÝÑо¿ÊÒ and a co-curator of the exhibition. “Although he was not the first, Kent helped to inspire a renowned on-island artistic tradition that continues to thrive more than a century later—and that also supported steps taken by the Islanders and others to preserve and protect Monhegan’s unique landscape.”

Added Jennifer Pye, Director, Monhegan Museum of Art & History and a co-curator of the exhibition, “Although visible from the mainland on clear days, Monhegan’s geographical isolation fosters a unique ecology, as well as self-reliance among its residents. This distinct blend of accessibility and remoteness, coupled with a strong spirit of community, continues to draw visitors and artists alike, captivated by its rugged beauty and the sense of being part of something truly apart from the wider world. We are excited about this innovative collaboration between art historians and scientists at º¬Ðß²ÝÑо¿ÊÒ, and historians of the Island itself, to bring this unique story to the public. The Monhegan Museum’s presentation in 2025 will emphasize different aspects of these narratives, sharing both some similar—and a few different—stories for those seeing the exhibition either on or off the island itself.”

Located 10 miles off the coast of Maine—lying north of Portland but south of Rockland—Monhegan Island is just less than a square mile in size, with a year-round population of around 60 residents. Yet Monhegan’s small scale (a fraction of the size of other well-known New England islands like Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard) has enabled the kind of close study—by artists and scientists alike—that reveals in intimate detail the changes in the ecology of the forest landscape. Forests have been permitted to follow their own trajectory free from development thanks to the exceptional conservation-mindedness of the community. Fully three quarters of Monhegan—the Wildlands—is conserved in a land trust where the prevailing stewardship ethos is to let nature take its course.

“While Monhegan has long been a canvas for artists, it has been an equally enriching landscape for scientists, a unique opportunity to observe the mechanisms of forest succession and resilience on a small scale,” said Frank Goodyear, Co-director of the º¬Ðß²ÝÑо¿ÊÒ Museum of Art and a co-curator of the exhibition. “As an art historian, it has been an engaging experience to work on developing an exhibition that integrates the narratives of artists, ecologists, and the community, and that so effectively relates these unique and instructive histories to the arc of environmental stewardship on Monhegan. Building on this experience, our exhibition concludes with invitations for visitors to reflect upon and express their own relationship to the Monhegan Wildlands and wildlands elsewhere.”

Art, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island: The Monhegan Wildlands will be accompanied by a catalogue written by Goodyear, Logan, and Pye, with new photography and an afterword from Accra Shepp of the School of Visual Arts, New York. David Foster, Director emeritus of Harvard Forest and a noted expert on forest change, land-use history, and ecology in New England, has authored the foreword.