The Colby College Museum of Art, founded in 1959, began as a small set of galleries inside the Bixler Art and Music Center with 2,800 square feet of space. James M. Carpenter, an art history professor in the College’s Art Department, served as the Museum’s first director. Early gifts from Maine collectors and artists built a collection focused on American art. Since then, the Museum has expanded across the College’s campus and into downtown Waterville.
Much of the Museum’s early funding came from Friends of Art, founded in 1959 to expand the Museum’s outreach. The advisory council included Jere Abbott, former founding associate director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). His endowment provided the College with its largest acquisitions fund. The fund supported the 1963 exhibition, Maine and Its Artists, 1740–1963, which sent 127 paintings to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
The Museum continued to expand in the 2000s and 2010s with the Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion opening in 2013. Growth extended into downtown Waterville with the opening of the Paul J. Schupf Art Center in December 2022. The Center welcomed more than 100,000 visitors in its first year and continues to host exhibitions, films, and other media.
The Colby Museum is central to the College’s academic life. Daniel Harkett, chair of the art department, recalls his interest in art history coming from an introductory college course. “I chose, following my curiosity but also somewhat randomly, to take an introduction to Western art in college,” Harkett said. “The first lecture was on Leonardo da Vinci, and I was mesmerized: I felt I could see new things by the end of the class.” Harkett now teaches a version of that course, AR112, at the College.
Harkett emphasizes how the College’s Art Department stands out for its “small classes, faculty that teach a wide range of interesting things, and close relationship with one of the best college art museums in the country.” He added that seeing success in students and “hearing back from alumni about where life takes them is one of the many pleasures of [his] job.” Students echo that sentiment. Emmy Armstrong-Schneider `28 said her “peers [in the art department] have all been very welcoming and intellectually engaging,” all while sharing a passion for the subject.
The College’s dedication to bringing the arts to the forefront of our education is inspiring. For students interested in majoring in art, Harkett declares, “Do it! You won’t regret it. Also, come chat with us. We love our program and would be thrilled to talk to you about it.”
For students who “like to get lost in big museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) or the Louvre,” the Colby College Museum of Art would offer a similar sense of discovery. Harkett “hope[s] that both folks who are excited about art and others who have never thought about it before find something there to engage them.”
~ Summer Woo `28
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