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Tuesday 10am - 5pm Wednesday 10am - 5pm Thursday 10am - 9pm Friday 10am - 5pm Saturday 10am - 5pm Sunday 12pm - 5pm

Colby College Museum of Art

Name: Colby College Museum of Art
Address: 5600 Mayflower Hl, Waterville, ME, 04901, US
Telephone: +12078595600
Price range: Not applicable
Rating: 4.9

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Colby College Museum of Art

The Colby College Museum of Art is free and open to all, with locations on the Colby College campus and on Main Street in downtown Waterville.
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https://linktr.ee/ColbyMuseum Founded in 1959, the Colby College Museum of Art is a teaching museum, a destination for American art, and a place for education and engagement with local, national, and global communities. Part of Colby College, the museum is located in Waterville, Maine, and actively contributes to Colby’s curricular and co-curricular programs and to the region’s quality of life. It

inspires connections between art and people through distinctive exhibitions, programs, and publications and through an outstanding collection that emphasizes American art and contemporary art within holdings that span cultures and time periods. The Colby Museum actively seeks to increase diversity, equity, inclusion, and access across all of its work and to advocate for the community value of art, artists, and museums in engaging with today’s most vital questions.

09/03/2026

🌙 🌊 Register today for the Gordon Center’s season opener: “MATAO [in process],” presented by the Matao-CHamoru collective Gi Matan Guma’!

Gi Matan Guma’ is a house for advancing CHamoru community development through learning, exploring, and innovating fino’ håya, pengnga’, and multidisciplinary creative research.

Free and open to all, “MATAO [in process]” is a ritual activation remembering ancestral wisdom to chart a new path toward freedom and liberation. By remembering ancestors who sailed beyond the horizon of human imagination, Gi Matan Guma’ gathers the courage and creativity to face the seemingly impossible challenges of the climate crisis, deep sea mining, and militarism.

🔗 Register for tickets at the link in our bio and join us two weeks from today!

09/01/2026

Spend your September with us!

🎉 First Friday! Block Party | Friday, September 4, 5–7 p.m.
A night of art, music, food, and fun to kick off the 50th Anniversary of the Common Ground Country Fair!

🖼️ Image Transfer Workshop with N. Sean Glover | Saturday, September 12, 1–3 p.m.
A hands-on introduction to a historic technique, exploring how small drawings are translated into life-scale images for walls and architectural surfaces. Advance registration is required.

🗳️ National Voter Registration Day | Tuesday, September 15, 11 a.m.–2 p.m.
Join us with Colby Votes and the Office of Civic Engagement for voter registration and tote bag screenprinting!

🌊 MATAO [in process] | Thursday, September 17, 7 p.m.
A performance by the Matao-CHamoru collective Gi Matan Guma’ presented in conjunction with the exhibition Imagining an Archipelago.

🔗 Tap the link in our bio to learn more and register!

08/26/2026

We can't wait to welcome students back to campus soon and kick off another semester of academic exploration in the museum's Landay Teaching Gallery.

The Landay Teaching Gallery supports our mission by providing a dedicated space for the close study of art. Faculty can request custom installations of collection works not currently on view in the public galleries to integrate directly into their curriculum.

Thanks to our on-site art storage, the Landay Gallery offers faculty and students unparalleled access to our collection of more than 10,000 artworks.

🔗 Tap the link in our bio to learn more about academic engagement and course visits at the Colby Museum.

08/21/2026

From supporting our annual Community Day to assisting with curatorial research, our incredible 2026 summer interns brought fresh energy, passion, and sharp insight to projects across every department! We are deeply grateful for their vital contributions to the museum.

Special thanks to the Bowdoin College Museum of Art (Bowdoin College Museum of Art), the Farnsworth Art Museum (Farnsworth Art Museum), and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) for a wonderful partnership that allowed our interns to connect across a rich network of Maine arts institutions.

We’ll be offering new student opportunities for the fall semester—stay tuned for upcoming announcements!

08/19/2026

As the steward of nearly 400 prints, paintings, drawings, and archival materials by James McNeill Whistler, the Colby College Museum of Art stands as an international epicenter for Whistler studies. That role is on full display this year as the museum lends 13 pivotal artworks to a major traveling retrospective co-organized by Tate Britain (Tate) and the Van Gogh Museum (Van Gogh Museum).

Elisa Germán, Colby’s Lunder Curator of Works on Paper and Whistler Studies, served as curatorial advisor, curated the show’s opening section on Whistler’s American origins, and authored a catalogue essay exploring his formative early years.

Edited by Carol Jacobi, Curator of British Art 1850–1915 at Tate Britain, the publication features a wide selection of paintings, drawings, prints, and designs from Whistler's body of work, with text by contributors from around the world illuminating the artist's legacy.

📖 Tap the link in our bio to explore the exhibition catalogue and learn more.

Looking ahead to summer 2027, the Colby Museum will open its own landmark exhibition in Waterville, marking the first major show to examine Whistler’s early life, American training, and ultimate transatlantic move.

08/17/2026

"archipelagoes resemble constellations" ✨

CHamoru poet Craig Santos Perez's visual poem, "ginen [sounding lines]" (Slide 2), greets visitors in the museum lobby, opening our exhibition "Imagining an Archipelago: Art from Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Their Diasporas." The poem evokes the wholeness of island worlds, interconnected through diaspora, environment, culture, and shared histories.

In "Imagining an Archipelago," artists explore their relationships to the histories and communities of their lands and seas—building a collective archipelago of stories that reflect realities complicated by US expansion.

📍 On view through June 6, 2027. Visit the link in our bio to learn more.
📷 Art Index

08/11/2026

This Thursday!

Hear from former Colby College President William D. Adams about his book "Cézanne at Château Noir: The History of a Fascination" — the story of the influence of Château Noir estate on artist Paul Cézanne and others.

🗓️ Thursday, August 13
🕕 6–7 p.m.
📍Schair-Swenson-Watson Alumni Center, Parker Reed Room

08/07/2026

In 2024, a group of artists visited Allen Island as part of a convening to develop our current exhibition, "Imagining an Archipelago: Art from Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Their Diasporas."

Following the trip, Lunder Institute fellows Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien facilitated a workshop where artists, scholars, and museum staff created work using handmade paper and materials foraged on the islands, discussing the politics of land and the experiences within it.

Visit the link in our bio to watch Judith Escalona’s video documenting the convening—a work commissioned on the occasion of the exhibition.

08/06/2026

📚 🎉 We are proud to announce that two Colby College Museum of Art publications have been named winners in AIGA's 50 Books | 50 Covers of 2025 competition.

"Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery"
Designed by Purtill Family Business (Purtill Family Business)
Co-published by Carnegie Museum of Art (Carnegie Museum of Art), Colby College Museum of Art, and DelMonico Books (DelMonico Books)

"Painted: Our Bodies, Hearts, and Village-Pueblo Perspectives on the American Southwest"
Designed by Sébastien Aubin, Otami- (OTAMI–ᐅᑕᒥ)
Published by Colby College Museum of Art

Winning selections become part of the AIGA Design's collection at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University's Butler Library in New York, where they are preserved and made available to researchers and students.

🔗 Visit the link in our bio to see the full winners gallery and visit museum.colby.edu to learn more about our award winning publications!

07/31/2026

Thank you to everyone who came out for Community Day last Saturday, July 25! We hope you enjoyed the fabulous weather, free food, live music, art activities, outdoor games, and lively community.

✨ A heartfelt thanks to our local partner organizations, businesses, community groups, and artists who tabled and led activities.

Community Day is generously supported by the Fullgraf Foundation.

📷 Community Day, 2026, Johanna Sorell (1–4, 7–11, 13–16) and Dave Dostie (5–6, 12).

Address

5600 Mayflower Hl
Waterville, ME
04901

Opening Hours

Tuesday	10am - 5pm
Wednesday	10am - 5pm
Thursday	10am - 9pm
Friday	10am - 5pm
Saturday	10am - 5pm
Sunday	12pm - 5pm

Telephone

+12078595600

Website

https://museum.colby.edu/

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