Misplaced Pages

#841158

56-471: The museum is set on a scenic active waterfront on the banks of the Kennebec River and includes the historic Percy and Small Shipyard with five original 19th-century buildings, a Victorian-era shipyard owner's home and New England's largest sculpture – a full size representation of the largest wooden sailing vessel ever built, the six-masted schooner Wyoming . The Marine Research Society of Bath

112-442: A broad range of everyday and natural materials, which are often chosen for their " evocative " qualities, as well as new media such as video , sound , performance , immersive virtual reality and the internet . Many installations are site-specific in that they are designed to exist only in the space for which they were created, appealing to qualities evident in a three-dimensional immersive medium. Artistic collectives such as

168-469: A genre during the 1990s, when artists became particularly interested in using the participation of the audiences to activate and reveal the meaning of the installation. With the improvement of technology over the years, artists are more able to explore outside of the boundaries that were never able to be explored by artists in the past. The media used are more experimental and bold; they are also usually cross media and may involve sensors, which plays on

224-539: A rate of 9,111 cubic feet per second (258.0 m /s). The United States government maintains three river flow gauges on the Kennebec river. The first is at Indian Pond ( 45°30′40″N 69°48′39″W  /  45.51114°N 69.81080°W  / 45.51114; -69.81080  ( Indian Pond, Maine ) ) where the rivershed is 1,590 square miles (4,100 km ). Flow here has ranged from 161 to 32,900 cubic feet per second (4.6 to 931.6  m /s ). The second

280-485: A size of 30,000 square feet. In 2010 it was reported the museum underwent a renovation to address water issues arising out of a design flaw in the roof. The museum's campus is dominated by a sculpture, designed to evoke the schooner Wyoming , which was the largest wooden vessel ever built in the United States. The Wyoming sank in 1924, but in an effort to connect Maine visitors with the seafaring past and raise

336-529: A tourist destination; and how art and craftsmanship has visually defined Maine vessels, Maine people, and Maine's coastal landscape. Much of the collection is available for research online. Permanent exhibits on the museum campus include: During the summer, the museum's flagship schooner the Mary E is also docked. Launched in Bath in 1906, the vessel is the oldest Maine-built fishing schooner still sailing. Mary E

392-618: Is a 170-mile-long (270 km) river within the U.S. state of Maine . It rises in Moosehead Lake in west-central Maine . The East and West Outlets join at Indian Pond and the river flows southward. Harris Station Dam , the largest hydroelectric dam in the state, was constructed near that confluence. The river is joined at The Forks by its tributary the Dead River , also called the West Branch. It continues south past

448-488: Is at Bingham ( 45°3′6″N 69°53′12″W  /  45.05167°N 69.88667°W  / 45.05167; -69.88667  ( Bingham, Maine ) ) where the rivershed is 2,715 square miles (7,030 km ). Flow here has ranged from 110 to 65,200 cu ft/s (3.1 to 1,846.3 m /s). The third is at North Sidney ( 44°28′21″N 69°41′09″W  /  44.47250°N 69.68583°W  / 44.47250; -69.68583  ( Bingham, Maine ) ) where

504-598: Is the third and most recent museum property to be added to the National Register of Historic Places , joining the Percy & Small Shipyard and the Donnell House. Maine Maritime Museum also exhibits a number of temporary, rotating exhibits throughout the year and offers river and coastal cruises and lighthouse tours. In 1987 a $ 7 million construction project to build a new home for the museum one mile from

560-491: The Exhibition Lab at New York's American Museum of Natural History created environments to showcase the natural world in as realistic a medium as possible. Likewise, Walt Disney Imagineering employed a similar philosophy when designing the multiple immersive spaces for Disneyland in 1955. Since its acceptance as a separate discipline, a number of institutions focusing on Installation art were created. These included

616-634: The Mattress Factory , Pittsburgh, the Museum of Installation in London, and the Fairy Doors of Ann Arbor, MI , among others. Installation art came to prominence in the 1970s but its roots can be identified in earlier artists such as Marcel Duchamp and his use of the readymade and Kurt Schwitters ' Merz art objects, rather than more traditional craft based sculpture . The "intention" of

SECTION 10

#1732797713842

672-597: The Smolin Gallery in New York. Installation as nomenclature for a specific form of art came into use fairly recently; its first use as documented by the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1969. It was coined in this context, in reference to a form of art that had arguably existed since prehistory but was not regarded as a discrete category until the mid-twentieth century. Allan Kaprow used

728-465: The West Indies and the southern United States for ice. In 1826, Rufus Page built the first large ice house near Gardiner, in order to supply Tudor. The ice was harvested during the winter from the river by farmers and others who were otherwise relatively inactive. They cut it by hand, floated the huge chunks to an ice house on the bank, and stored it until spring. Then, packed in sawdust, the ice

784-546: The fall line and does not have rapids. As a consequence, ocean tides and saltwater fish species, such as the endangered Atlantic Sturgeon , can go upriver affecting the ecology as far north as Waterville, a small city located more than 35 miles inland. Tributaries of the Kennebec include the Carrabassett River , Sandy River , and Sebasticook River . Segments of the East Coast Greenway run along

840-400: The simulacrum or flawed statue : it neglects any ideal form in favor of optimizing its direct appearance to the observer. Installation art operates fully within the realm of sensory perception, in a sense "installing" the viewer into an artificial system with an appeal to his subjective perception as its ultimate goal. An interactive installation frequently involves the audience acting on

896-523: The "City of Ships". The Wyoming , one of the largest wooden schooners ever built, was constructed here. For parts of the 17th century, the Kennebec was the western boundary of Cornwall County, Province of New York . Following the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain, the US enjoyed a lengthy period of expansion of international trade, which increased the demand for shipbuilding and stimulated

952-752: The 1600s the Abenaki village of Norridgewock was located along the Kennebec. The English founded the Popham Colony along the Kennebec in 1607. The settlers built the Virginia of Sagadahoc , the first oceangoing vessel built in the New World by English-speaking shipwrights. An English trading post, Cushnoc , was established on the Kennebec in 1628. Bath and other cities along the Kennebec were developed, and artisans founded shipyards that produced hundreds of wooden and steel vessels. Bath became known as

1008-647: The Abenaki Indian mission village at Norridgewock in August 1724 crippled the Abenaki resistance, as they killed as many as 40 inhabitants, including women and children. They also killed and scalped Fr. Sebastien Rasle, the 67-year old Jesuit priest, and scalped 26 of the dead Abenaki. Having plundered and torched the tribal village, the Yankee raiders destroyed the surrounding corn fields; they were paid bounties for

1064-622: The Edwards Dam was built across the Kennebec River, just shy of the limit of tidal influence. Made of timber and concrete, it extended 917 feet (280 m) across the river and 25 feet (7.6 m) high. Its reservoir stretched 17 miles (27 km) upstream, and covered 1,143 acres (4.63 km ). In 1999, the dam was removed, after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) determined that

1120-481: The Kennebec gorge just below Harris Station Dam . Acknowledging the desire of young people for a space solely dedicated to kids, absent of adult gatherings and limiting constraints, in 1998 Northern Outdoors opened Adventure Bound - Maine's only youth focused whitewater rafting company for kids and families. In the early 21st century, Northern Outdoors and 22 other rafting companies in The Forks conduct rafting on

1176-531: The Kennebec. The name "Kennebec" comes from the Eastern Abenaki /kínipekʷ/ , meaning "large body of still water, large bay". In 1605, French explorer Samuel de Champlain navigated the coast of what is now Maine , charting the land and rivers of what was then called New France , L'Acadie , including the Kennebec as far upriver as present-day Bath , as well as the St. Croix , and Penobscot rivers. In

SECTION 20

#1732797713842

1232-542: The artist is paramount in much later installation art whose roots lie in the conceptual art of the 1960s. This again is a departure from traditional sculpture which places its focus on form . Early non-Western installation art includes events staged by the Gutai group in Japan starting in 1954, which influenced American installation pioneers like Allan Kaprow . Wolf Vostell shows his installation 6 TV Dé-coll/age in 1963 at

1288-716: The book "Themes in Contemporary Art", it is suggested that "installations in the 1980s and 1990s were increasingly characterized by networks of operations involving the interaction among complex architectural settings, environmental sites and extensive use of everyday objects in ordinary contexts. With the advent of video in 1965, a concurrent strand of installation evolved through the use of new and ever-changing technologies, and what had been simple video installations expanded to include complex interactive, multimedia and virtual reality environments". In "Art and Objecthood", Michael Fried derisively labels art that acknowledges

1344-409: The curious and eager viewer, still aware that they are in an exhibition setting and tentatively exploring the novel universe of the installation. The artist and critic Ilya Kabakov mentions this essential phenomenon in the introduction to his lectures "On the "Total" Installation": "[One] is simultaneously both a 'victim' and a viewer, who on the one hand surveys and evaluates the installation, and on

1400-429: The ecological benefits of removing it outweighed the value of the electricity it produced, and refused the renewal of the dam license. Despite several negative visual and environmental factors at first, the ecosystem is healing itself. Initially after the removal of the dam, barren riverbanks and muddy water were evident along the lower 17 miles (27 km) of the Kennebec. Introduced smallmouth bass will suffer from

1456-627: The few yards still building warships for the United States Navy . The USCGC Kennebec was named after this river. With waterways the most accessible travel routes, the Kennebec River served as an early trade corridor to interior Maine from the Atlantic coast. Ocean ships could navigate upstream as far as Augusta. The cities of Bath, Gardiner , Hallowell and Augusta, and the towns of Woolwich , Richmond and Randolph , all developed along this transportation corridor. Upstream of Augusta,

1512-422: The flatlands along the river through these towns and cities. England's 1710 conquest of Acadia brought mainland Nova Scotia under English control, but New France still claimed present-day New Brunswick and present-day Maine east of the Kennebec River. (The Kennebec River was also a border for the indigenous Native Americans and First Nations. ) To secure its claim, New France established Catholic missions in

1568-475: The flood's peak, the flow topped out at an estimated 232,000 cubic feet per second (6,600 m /s). It caused damage of about $ 100,000,000 (equivalent to about $ 268,000,000 in 2023), flooding 2,100 homes, destroying 215, and damaging 240 others. Signs of the flood can still be found in the towns and cities that line the river. In 1976 Suzanne and Wayne Hockmeyer, of Kennebec Whitewater Expeditions (now Northern Outdoors), pioneered whitewater rafting through

1624-466: The growth of maritime fleets. Many of those ships were built in Bath. In 1854, at the peak of this boom period, at least nineteen major firms were building ships in Bath. Changes in the industry since the mid-20th century have resulted in the decline in US shipbuilding, as jobs moved offshore. The sole remaining shipyard in Bath is the Bath Iron Works , owned by General Dynamics ; this is one of

1680-631: The history of Maine shipbuilding and seafaring" and the Portland Harbor Museum "received few visitors." In 2012, the Gazela Primeiro visited the Maine Maritime Museum to commemorate the museum's half-century anniversary. The museum's collection contains more than 20,000 objects and millions of rare documents and manuscripts related to Maine's maritime heritage and its direct global impact, from prehistory to

1736-435: The line between "art" and "life"; Kaprow noted that "if we bypass 'art' and take nature itself as a model or point of departure, we may be able to devise a different kind of art... out of the sensory stuff of ordinary life". The conscious act of artistically addressing all the senses with regard to a total experience made a resounding debut in 1849 when Richard Wagner conceived of a Gesamtkunstwerk , or an operatic work for

Maine Maritime Museum - Misplaced Pages Continue

1792-435: The museum for tours each summer. In 2019, the museum broke ground on a $ 3.3 million project to redesign the south side and arrival areas of the campus. The project includes a complete redevelopment of the front entrance and 5-acre south campus, with a goal of enhancing visitor experience, creating an ecologically friendly and attractive landscape to border the Kennebec River , and increasing physical accessibility. In 1983 it

1848-559: The museum resided in two sites, and a 20-minute ferry transported visitors between the two locations. By 1983, the museum exhibited their collection at three separate sites: Sewall House, the Winter Street Center and the Apprenticeshop. In 1989, the museum moved permanently to a single campus with the new, three-story, climate-controlled Maritime History Building. Encompassing the historic Percy & Small Shipyard,

1904-405: The museum's campus was in progress. Completed in 1989, the new location includes the Percy & Small Shipyard, preserving the nation's only surviving wooden shipbuilding site. Winton Scott Architects designed the current Maine Maritime Museum gallery building. In 1987, Elizabeth B. Noyce donated $ 3.5 million towards the construction on the museum's building. The building was completed in 1989 to

1960-456: The new environment. What is common to nearly all installation art is a consideration of the experience in toto and the problems it may present, namely the constant conflict between disinterested criticism and sympathetic involvement. Television and video offer somewhat immersive experiences, but their unrelenting control over the rhythm of passing time and the arrangement of images precludes an intimately personal viewing experience. Ultimately,

2016-492: The new location allowed all museum functions to be in one place for the first time in the organization's history. In June 2010, due to the recession the Portland Harbor Museum and Maine Maritime Museum merged. The collection from the Portland Harbor Museum was moved to Maine Maritime Museum on the basis that the Bath museum is a climate-controlled facility and the "premier facility for visitors to experience

2072-415: The only things a viewer can be assured of when experiencing the work are his own thoughts and preconceptions and the basic rules of space and time. All else may be molded by the artist's hands. The central importance of the subjective point of view when experiencing installation art, points toward a disregard for traditional Platonic image theory. In effect, the entire installation adopts the character of

2128-442: The other, follows those associations, recollections which arise in him[;] he is overcome by the intense atmosphere of the total illusion". Here installation art bestows an unprecedented importance on the observer's inclusion in that which he observes. The expectations and social habits that the viewer brings with him into the space of the installation will remain with him as he enters, to be either applied or negated once he has taken in

2184-585: The present. Over the period of 2001 through to 2007 the museum's collection of objects grew from 16,000 to 20,000. Through the 1980s and 1990s, the institution broadened its scope to include the entirety of Maine's maritime culture. The collection aids exploration of a number of social, political, and cultural themes including how maritime Maine promoted globalization and shaped America's geopolitical role; how Maine families operated their maritime businesses; how Maine's fisheries interact with its economy and ecology; how Maine's coast and inland waterways were promoted as

2240-611: The profile of the museum, a full-scale sculptural installation was erected in 2001 to celebrate the ship. At 444 feet long, it is the largest sculpture in New England and is situated on the former ways where the Wyoming was built. In 2001 the museum raised $ 4 million through donations from the public and spent $ 300,000 from those funds on the sculpture. Until 2014, the Grand Banks fishing schooner Sherman Zwicker docked at

2296-598: The re-introduced striped bass, which tend to feed on young smallmouth bass. An increase in raptor populations, such as ospreys , bald eagles , herons , cormorants , and kingfishers , is evident. Human activities also benefited from the dam removal. The exposure of rapids and the return of native fish species allows many recreational activities, including canoeing , kayaking , whitewater rafting , and fishing . The river drains 5,869 square miles (15,200 km ), and on average discharges 5.893 billion US gallons (22,310,000 m ) per day into Merrymeeting Bay at

Maine Maritime Museum - Misplaced Pages Continue

2352-501: The region reduced the runs of such fish. The removal of dams on the river has been a controversial local issue in recent years. The removal of the Edwards Dam in 1999 has led to increased anadromous activity on the river. The following is a list of hydroelectric power stations on the Kennebec River. The Kennebec River before the construction of Edwards Dam was extremely important as a spawning ground for Atlantic fish. In 1837,

2408-571: The river daily from May through October. Four times per rafting season, Brookfield Power tests their generating turbines by releasing the maximum amount of water possible from Harris Station Dam. At 8000 cubic feet per second, these Kennebec River Turbine Tests are the biggest whitewater releases in Maine. Prior to the industrial era, the river contained many anadromous fish , in particular the Atlantic salmon . The exploiting of hydroelectric power in

2464-654: The river was dammed, it was navigable as far as Augusta. Installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called public art , land art or art intervention ; however, the boundaries between these terms overlap. Installation art can be either temporary or permanent. Installation artworks have been constructed in exhibition spaces such as museums and galleries, as well as public and private spaces. The genre incorporates

2520-636: The rivershed is 5,403 square miles (13,990 km ). Flow here has ranged from 1,160 to 232,000 cu ft/s (33 to 6,570 m /s). Two additional river stage gauges (no flow data) are in Augusta ( 44°19′06″N 69°46′17″W  /  44.31833°N 69.77139°W  / 44.31833; -69.77139  ( Augusta, Maine ) ) and Gardiner ( 44°13′50″N 69°46′16″W  /  44.23056°N 69.77111°W  / 44.23056; -69.77111  ( Gardiner, Maine ) ); both of these gauge heights are affected by ocean tides. Before

2576-657: The scalps. Some Abenaki survivors returned to the Upper Kennebec, but others took refuge with Penobscot allies or in Abenaki mission villages in French Canada. Some 1,110 American Revolutionary War soldiers followed the route of the Kennebec during Benedict Arnold's expedition to Quebec in 1775. During the War of 1812 , United States and British Canadian forces fought at the Battle of Hampden in Maine. In 1814, Frederic Tudor began to establish markets in

2632-401: The stage that drew inspiration from ancient Greek theater in its inclusion of all the major art forms: painting , writing , music , etc. (Britannica). In devising operatic works to commandeer the audience's senses, Wagner left nothing unobserved: architecture , ambience, and even the audience itself were considered and manipulated in order to achieve a state of total artistic immersion. In

2688-461: The term "Environment" in 1958 (Kaprow 6) to describe his transformed indoor spaces; this later joined such terms as "project art" and "temporary art." Essentially, installation/environmental art takes into account a broader sensory experience, rather than floating framed points of focus on a "neutral" wall or displaying isolated objects (literally) on a pedestal. This may leave space and time as its only dimensional constants, implying dissolution of

2744-531: The three largest native villages in the region: one on the Kennebec River ( Norridgewock ); one further north on the Penobscot River ( Penobscot ), and one on the Saint John River ( Medoctec ). Abenaki warriors along the Kennebec resisted English encroachment by armed confrontations, in what American historians sometimes refer to as Father Rale's War (1722–1725). A Yankee militia raid on

2800-435: The timber industry used the river for log driving , to transport wooden logs and pulpwood from interior forests to sawmills and paper mills built along the river to use its water power . The city of Waterville and the towns of Winslow , Skowhegan, Norridgewock , Madison, Anson , and Bingham were all related to the lumber trade. The Maine Central Railroad and U.S. Route 201 were later constructed to make use of

2856-605: The towns of Madison , Skowhegan , the city of Waterville , and the state capital Augusta . At Richmond , it flows into Merrymeeting Bay , a 16-mile-long (26 km) freshwater tidal bay into which also flow the Androscoggin River and five smaller rivers. The Kennebec runs past the shipbuilding center of Bath , and has its mouth at the Gulf of Maine in the Atlantic Ocean . The Southern Kennebec flows below

SECTION 50

#1732797713842

2912-436: The viewer as " theatrical " (Fried 45). There is a strong parallel between installation and theater: both play to a viewer who is expected to be at once immersed in the sensory / narrative experience that surrounds him and maintain a degree of self-identity as a viewer. The traditional theater-goer does not forget that they have come in from outside to sit and take in a created experience; a trademark of installation art has been

2968-485: The work of art or the piece responding to users' activity. There are several kinds of interactive installations that artists produce, these include web -based installations (e.g., Telegarden ), gallery -based installations, digital -based installations, electronic -based installations, mobile -based installations, etc. Interactive installations appeared mostly at end of the 1980s ( Legible City by Jeffrey Shaw , La plume by Edmond Couchot , Michel Bret...) and became

3024-456: Was founded in 1962 by seven residents from Bath, Maine. The early years saw the founders renting a storefront in 1964 to exhibit the collection. In 1964 one of Bath's wealthy shipbuilding families, the Sewalls, gave the museum their mansion to exhibit the museum's collection. It was called Bath Marine Museum until 1972 when the name was officially changed to Maine Maritime Museum. In the 1980s

3080-529: Was loaded aboard ships and sent to the South. On April 1, 1987, a combination of more than 6 feet (1.8 m) of melting snow and 4 to 6 inches (100 to 150 mm) of rain in the mountains forced the river to flood its banks. By April 2, 1987, the river had crested at the North Sidney, Maine USGS gage at 39.31 ft (11.98 m), 13.3 ft (4.1 m) higher than the previous record flood stage. At

3136-414: Was reported that the museum was one of Maine's most popular attractions receiving 30,000 people in 1982. By 2018, visitation had increased to more than 50,000 annually. Maine Maritime Museum has been recognized as among the top ten maritime museums in the world and was named the best museum in Maine by USA Today in 2018 and 2019. Kennebec River The Kennebec River ( Abenaki : Kinəpékʷihtəkʷ )

#841158