Peaks Island’s History Museum

New exhibits for 2023 season:

Relics of the Defeated:
Confederate Artifacts at the Fifth Maine Museum

The Fifth Maine veterans collected relics from both sides of the conflict,

but Confederate artifacts were popular. These objects helped to validate their service to a cause greater than themselves, and in some small way justify the deaths and injuries of their fellow comrades.
Owning, handling, and displaying these objects were tactile reminders of their victory over the South, and
all that represented, as well as a way to tell noncombatants that story without words. The veterans built the Fifth Maine Memorial Hall in part to hold these relics and share them with others, in hope that the
sacrifices made during the War – and the defeat of the Confederacy – would never be forgotten.

This exhibit, curated by Holly Hurd-Forsyth, opened in May 2023 as a permanent exhibit in the Fifth Maine Museum’s Memorial Hall.

Peaks. Like No Other Island: Photographs by David Owen

Photographer David Owen has been visiting Peaks Island for 30 years and thinks of Peaks Island as “a free verse poem, where there is no rhyme or regular meter; no proscribed patterns; the cadences are natural and not set by any convention.”  In this exhibit, David has written a story to accompany each of his photographs — stories that share how some of the men, women and children of Peaks Island help make it like no other island.

David Owen is a photographer and the author of Like No Other Place, a book of his photographs and stories drawn from the time he spent in the ranching country of Nebraska Sand Hills. His photographs have been shown at The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts and at the Gallery on the Green, hear his home in Connecticut where he lives with his wife Anne.

The Fifth Maine Museum is hosting an Opening Reception in the dining room, on Thursday, June 22nd, from 4:30 – 7pm. Everyone is invited to eat, drink and be merry and have a chance to chat with the photographer! The exhibit runs through October 2023.

Continuing for 2022 season:

Weathering the Storm:
Five Centuries of Resilience on Peaks Island

We are pleased to announce a new temporary exhibition that explores how adversity has effected the island, slated to open in June 2021.

Entitled “Weathering the Storm: Five Centuries of Resilience on Peaks Island,” the exhibit starts at the point of European contact with the indigenous Wabanaki people in the early 1600s and explores a defining hardship for each of the next five centuries, asking the question “Is resilience and community more meaningful here on Peaks Island, where outside assistance is not always accessible?”

It’s impossible to present a grand summary of every event that ever happened on Peaks Island during the last five centuries, and wisely, the exhibit doesn’t take that approach. Instead, it focuses on smaller, more personal stories that help the visitor appreciate the islanders’ tenacity and the complexity of island history through the eyes of the people who lived it. Visitors will leave the exhibit contemplating how events have shaped, and continue to shape, our community.

Weathering the Storm is curated by Holly Hurd-Forsyth and runs through October 2023.