Ogunquit Museum Of American Art

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Ogunquit Museum Of American Art A historic and cultural site where visitors encounter and think about modern and contemporary art.
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The Ogunquit Museum of American Art is the only museum in Maine devoted exclusively to the exhibition, preservation, and interpretation of American art. The Museum houses a permanent collection of important paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, and photographs from the late 1800s to the present. Included in the collection is an extensive selection of works by artists associated with Ogunquit’s famous art colony of the early 20th century. Our collection includes a beautiful three-acre sculpture park with 17 gardens overlooking Narrow Cove and the Atlantic Ocean.

10/17/2026

How do we make time to attend to family life, and what does it mean for art to emerge within its rhythms? Myths of the singular, autonomous artist often obscure the collective conditions—care, labor, and domestic life—that shape creative practice.

In this conversation, artists turn toward family as subject and structure. Their works dwell in the seemingly banal and unremarkable moments of domestic life, revealing how care itself becomes a generative force in shaping perception, memory, and artistic form.
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Bernard Karfiol (1886–1952), “Mimi and John Laurent at the Family Farm”, ca. 1924, oil on canvas. Gift of Owen W. and Anna H. Wells, 2002.5.

Stephen Pace (1918–2010), “Saturday Bath, #2, 98-8”, 1965, oil on canvas. Gift of the Stephen and Palmina Pace Foundation, 2023.2.5.

The Ogunquit Museum of American Art is thrilled to announce the permanent acquisition of Hank Willis Thomas’s “Duality (...
10/15/2026

The Ogunquit Museum of American Art is thrilled to announce the permanent acquisition of Hank Willis Thomas’s “Duality (Reflection)” (2022–2023)—a monumental stainless-steel sculpture now joining the Museum’s three-acre sculpture garden. ✨

Rising from the landscape, the sculpture’s raised arm can evoke peace, victory, protest, or affirmation. Its mirrored surface invites another kind of reflection, capturing visitors and making them part of the work itself.

Since its installation earlier this year in the exhibition “Looking for America”, the sculpture has already become beloved by the OMAA community. Schoolchildren, first-time visitors, and generations of returning audiences have spontaneously posed with the work, seeing themselves reflected in its surface. In doing so, “Duality (Reflection)” advances OMAA’s mission to bring national voices and local experiences into dynamic dialogue, grounded in the Museum’s singular setting on the coast of Maine.

“Duality (Reflection)” is the first large-scale sculpture by Hank Willis Thomas to enter a museum collection in Maine, bringing the work of one of the most significant contemporary American artists of his generation permanently to Ogunquit. 

We are incredibly grateful to all the supporters who made this acquisition possible, as well as Hank Willis Thomas, Pace Gallery, New York, and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Elwyn George Gowen: Artist and Educator April 23 – November 14, 2027 The exhibition Elwyn George Gowen: Artist and Educa...
10/14/2026

Elwyn George Gowen: Artist and Educator
April 23 – November 14, 2027

The exhibition Elwyn George Gowen: Artist and Educator explores the networks of arts education that connected artists, designers, and institutions across early twentieth-century New England, through the career of Elwyn George Gowen (1895–1954). A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1918, where he received highest honors, Gowen was trained in the principles of color, composition, and design. He continued his studies at the New York School of Interior Decoration and worked as an assistant to Harvard’s Dr. Denman W. Ross, an influential theorist of color, as well as collaborating with Jay Hambidge on the principles of Dynamic Symmetry, a design theory. His design practice encompassed textiles and interior decoration, earning him the Degree of Master Craftsman from The Society of Arts & Crafts, Boston.

In 1932, Gowen joined an outdoor painting class with Charles H. Woodbury in Ogunquit, Maine, an experience that redirected his career toward landscape and seascape painting. In 1935, Woodbury invited him to become an instructor and associate at his Ogunquit and Boston studios. Gowen also taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and other art schools and private studios throughout Maine and Massachusetts, eventually serving as Artist in Residence at Nasson College in Sanford, Maine. His career offers a distinctive lens through which to understand Ogunquit not as an isolated space of summer learning, but as part of a broader ecosystem of art education in New England, one in which ideas about design, color, composition, and painting circulated among schools, museums, artists, and independent studios.
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Elwyn George Gowen,” North West Day”, 1936, oil on canvas, 23 ¾ x 29 ¾ in. Courtesy of Ken Turino & Chris Mathias Collection.

10/12/2026

In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we are proud to highlight Nicholas Galanin’s “I Think It Goes Like This (Gold)” featured in “American Conversations.” Paired with Kara Walker, this conversational pair invite us to look more closely and to reflect on how we absorb, question, and remake history in our daily lives.  

For Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, including Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit and Unangax̂), totem poles are ceremonial objects that record family histories, convey stories, and mark important events. In I Think It Goes Like This (Gold), a gold-leafed pole lies dismantled on the ground, unsettling expectations of cultural authenticity. The carving was originally produced by an Indonesian artist for the Alaskan tourist market. Through acts of disruption, reassembly, and gilding, Galanin critiques economies of cultural appropriation while reclaiming the object as Indigenous art.  

Thank you to Art Bridges Foundation for this important loan into the exhibition! Be sure to visit now through November 1. 

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Nicholas Galanin (b. 1979), “I Think It Goes Like This (Gold)”, 2019, wood, paint, and gold leaf. Art Bridges. 

Kara Walker (b. 1969), “Burning African Village Play Set with Big House and Lynching”, 2006, painted laser-cut steel. Collection of Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté.

10/09/2026

How do we grieve? Loss—and the sadness, anger, and despair that accompany it—is present not only in American life, but in life itself. 

Many artists sit with feelings that stem from grief, using art as a means of confronting, holding, and working through it. Art has long served as a powerful tool for reckoning with loss and for opening pathways toward forms of healing. It allows us to carry the past forward while still imagining otherwise. The artists in this conversation ask us to sit with grief shaped by violence in the United States, confronting devastation through enduring forms of beauty.

Visit “American Conversations” now through November 1.
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Jordan Ann Craig (b. 1992), “Sharp Tongue; Too Much Sadness”, 2024, acrylic on canvas in two parts. Courtesy the Artist and Hales London and New York.

Crystalle Lacouture (b. 1978), “Half Mast (18 for Lewiston)”, 2025, gouache and colored pencil on Score Keeper shooting targets. Courtesy the Artist and Praise Shadows, Boston.

This August, OMAA was honored to be one of three nonprofits selected by The Fabulous Find to receive proceeds from its m...
10/07/2026

This August, OMAA was honored to be one of three nonprofits selected by The Fabulous Find to receive proceeds from its monthly fundraising efforts. Together with Ogunquit Playhouse and Animal Welfare Society 📍 maine we shared in $45,327 raised through The Fabulous Find’s retail sales—a truly extraordinary gift from our community.

We’re so thankful to The Fabulous Find for their generous support and for creating meaningful connections among organizations across the Seacoast region.

A heartfelt thank-you to everyone who shopped, donated, visited, and helped make this incredible partnership possible!

Joe BradleyAugust 5 - November 14, 2027The Ogunquit Museum of American Art will present a major exhibition of work by Ma...
10/06/2026

Joe Bradley
August 5 - November 14, 2027

The Ogunquit Museum of American Art will present a major exhibition of work by Maine-born artist Joe Bradley, bringing together large-scale paintings, drawings, and sculptures spanning the past 25 years of his career. The exhibition explores the pastoral as a defining current in Bradley’s continually evolving practice. Known for moving fluidly between abstraction, figuration, and conceptual experimentation, Bradley has consistently challenged expectations of contemporary painting. His recent works turn toward the natural world, introducing expansive fields of color, earthy palettes, and loosely articulated environments that evoke open skies, grazing creatures, standing figures, and rural terrain.
 
Rather than offering a nostalgic vision of nature, Bradley reimagines the subject matter through gestural mark-making, material immediacy, and the language of modern abstraction. For Bradley, the pastoral becomes less a place than a state of mind—a space where abstraction and lived experience, figure and landscape, history and renewal converge. Presented in his home state, the exhibition offers a new perspective on this significant dimension of Bradley’s practice while situating his work within the cultural and geographic context of Maine.
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Joe Bradley, “You & I”, 2025. Oil on canvas. 91 x 75 1/8 inches. 231.1 x 190.8 cm. © 2026 Joe Bradley. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.

10/01/2026

The countdown begins! ⏰

Be sure to visit the Museum before the season ends on November 1. We’re open Monday through Sunday, 10 AM–5 PM.

Join us Tuesday, October 6, for our final OMAA Conversation of the season with Dr. Donna Cassidy!“Carl Sprinchorn’s Worl...
09/26/2026

Join us Tuesday, October 6, for our final OMAA Conversation of the season with Dr. Donna Cassidy!

“Carl Sprinchorn’s Worlds: New York, Sweden, Maine”

Carl Sprinchorn was always on the move. His travels took him to diverse locales across North American and Europe as he sought new experiences and new ways of artmaking. In this lecture, Dr. Cassidy explores how three of those “worlds”—New York, Sweden, Maine—shaped his art. Sprinchorn was not a mere tourist passing through these places but was grounded in their art and culture—in Robert Henri’s realism and the spectacle of the modern city; in Scandinavian painting, naturism, and mysticism; and in Maine and its regionalism.

Doors open at 5pm. Register through the link in our bio!

Address

543 Shore Road
Ogunquit, ME
03907

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 5pm
Tuesday 10am - 5pm
Wednesday 10am - 5pm
Thursday 10am - 5pm
Friday 10am - 5pm
Saturday 10am - 5pm
Sunday 10am - 5pm

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+12076464909

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