Four Stories: Inside the Portland Harbor Museum Collection

(April 18 through November 30, 2008)

Portland Harbor Museum will open its new exhibit,

“Four Stories: Inside the Portland Harbor Museum

Collection,” on April 18, 2008.  The exhibit will run from April 18, 2008 through November 30, 2008.  The exhibit focuses on four themes taken from the museum’s collection: The Portland Ship Ceiling Company, vintage postcards,Casco Bay Lines ferries, and an unrealized WPA project in the 1930s that would have transformed Portland’s Back Cove.  The exhibit is sponsored in part by the Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust.

 

Snow Squall: The Journey of an American Clipper Ship

(running through November 30, 2008)

Built in 1851, just a few miles from the museum, Snow Squall sailed for 13 years and carried goods to faraway lands. This exhibit, which includes timbers and artifacts from the vessel, tells the story of Snow Squall, its abandonment in the Falkland Islands in the 1860s, and its recovery and return to South Portland in the 1980s. Visitors learn about the Age of Clipper Ships and Nineteenth Century wooden shipbuilding.

The Photographs of Edward T. Richardson, Jr.

(running through November 30, 2008)

Spanning the period from 1954 to 1996, this exhibit showcases seven documentary, yet aesthetically compelling, photographs by Edward T. Richardson, Jr. Highlights include his views of the Portland Pilot Boat (1954), the Coast Guard Training Ship Eagle (1975), and the Aircraft Carrier John F. Kennedy (1987).

 

Picturing Portland: A Century of Change

(running through November 25, 2007)

Our exhibit will be on display at the Ocean Gateway Terminal in Portland starting in May 2008.

This exhibit pairs images from the museum’s Angell Collection of century-old photographs with contemporary photographs of the same scenes. Each set of images reveals changes,

or the absence of change, in the local landscape. Compare the chaos following the 1893 Munjoy Hill Reservoir break with a peaceful contemporary view of the harbor. In another pairing, the trains of the Maine Central Depot have been replaced by modern shipping containers. Two images of Longfellow Square show little change. This look at Greater Portland then and now features fifty-five photographs.