Maine State Museum May Roundup

Museum Roundup

News & Updates from the Maine State Museum

May 2022

Spotlight Returns to the Blaine House and Maine's Governors Past and Present

The Blaine House, which has served as the headquarters for Maine’s governors since 1920, is once again open for guided tours. The Blaine House features historical furnishings, artwork, and the library of late 1800s national political leader and Maine native James G. Blaine.

This year, the Blaine House exhibits also take a look back at a governors meeting held in Maine in 1925, just in time for a national governors meeting scheduled in Portland this summer.

The Latest...

MSM Curator to Present Civil War lecture in Augusta

Maine State Museum Chief Curator of History and Decorative Arts, Laurie LaBar, presents Maine Voices from the Civil War for the Kennebec Historical Society at the Maine State Library’s temporary location, 242 State Street, at 6:30 on May 18th. For more information: 207-622-7718 or https://kennebechistorical.org

Museum Celebrates Home Education Week Virtually

We join homeschoolers around Maine in celebrating Maine Home Education Week from May 1-7, 2022. Although the museum can’t host homeschool families at the museum, we welcome them to our live virtual programs that cover topics such as 19th-century logging, sustainable lobstering, the formation of rocks and minerals, Maine's bicentennial, pandemics, and the dynamics of freedom and captivity in our culture. All are interactive and customized. Find more information here.

Blaine House Opens for Tours

The Blaine House is the home of Maine’s governors and their families and is also a public building. The 25-minute tour explores the first floor rooms of the 1833 mansion and describes the historical background of teacher turned political leader, James G. Blaine.

Tours of the Blaine House are available for free but must be scheduled in advance. Click here for information and to schedule a tour.

Governor Brewster’s Guestbook - a Timely Addition to the Museum’s Collection

Thanks to a donation by the Friends of the Blaine House, the Maine State Museum has received a unique guestbook that gives an inside look at the official life of Maine Governor Ralph Owen Brewster, who held office from 1925-1929.

The guestbook opens with an inscription and signatures of attendees at a Blaine House luncheon, held during the 1925 National Governors Conference. Brewster hosted the gathering, centered at Poland Spring and attended by twenty-two state governors. Among the notables were Al Smith, governor of New York and 1928 presidential candidate, and Nellie Tayloe Ross, governor of Wyoming and the first woman elected to govern a state.

Governors Conference_Poland Spring_1925.jpg

Nellie Tayloe Ross (top row, left), Ralph Owen Brewster (bottom row, middle)

Governor Janet Mills will host the National Governors Association Summer Meeting in Portland this year from July 13 – 15. Attendees visiting the Blaine House during that meeting will be able to view the Brewster guestbook, a remarkable memento of their predecessors’ work nearly 100 years ago.

Click here for pictures and the full story

Pest Control on the Rocks

Video of the freezer in action

Conservator Teresa Myers moving specimens into the new freezer.

The Maine State Museum is up and running with an important new collections care tool - a walk-in freezer, with over 750 cubic feet of space and the ability to reach temperatures below -10 degrees Fahrenheit.

The freezer has found its home in the museum’s natural science collection storage space. There, it will be near the site of a low-level infestation of clothes moths, particularly in the extensive collection of taxidermy.

Whether in homes or museum storage areas, these clothes moths and other protein-loving pests, such as carpet beetles, are resilient opportunists. But under controlled conditions, they cannot withstand extended exposure to temperatures below -4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Following a carefully designed protocol to destroy insect pests, museum staff will work their way through the collection, isolating, freezing, and then thawing the taxidermy mounts.

The new freezer was purchased with special funds directed to conservation projects. It makes an important advance in the museum’s collections care capacity, while ensuring the long-term survival of natural science specimens that are essential to an understanding of Maine’s ecology and environment.

MAINE STATE MUSEUM | www.mainestatemuseum.org