Come and meet the Museum Director for the Maine State Museum, Mr. Bernard Fishman.
“The Maine State museum is America’s oldest state museum (founded in 1836), and is known as ‘Maine’s Smithsonian’ because of the breadth and diversity of its collections—nearly a million objects representing almost everything about Maine and its cultural, environmental, and natural history. Its collections are the largest and most comprehensive of any museum in Maine. Bernard Fishman, the museum’s director, has recently edited and published a book, A Story of Maine in 112 Objects, which tells the whole story of Maine through a choice selection of 112 objects in the museum’s collections. From a 400 million year old fossil, through the only authentic Viking object found in the United States, to a genuine 200-year old sawmill moved to the museum and rebuilt piece by piece inside it, he’ll tell the fascinating stories of how the museum acquired some of its most compelling objects, and what they have to tell us about the saga of Maine. You won’t want to miss these tales of how you create a museum and its contents, how these special objects got to the museum, and what they and the characters that made or used them have added to the richness of our state.
Bernard Fishman grew up in New York City and trained as an Egyptologist at the University of Pennsylvania. He worked in Egypt for three years, for the University of Chicago. His family owned several Five and Ten Cent Stores in Maine under the name of the M.H. Fishman Company, and he spent eleven years at summer camps in Maine during his early years. He directed history museums in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Rhode Island before coming to the Maine State Museum in 2012.”
Campers from Camp Arcadia will also join us to sing camp songs!
Gather with us on the Common afterwards for a delicious Ice Cream Social and take the opportunity to visit the one-room Bell Hill Schoolhouse. The 1938 Bell Hill Meetinghouse and Schoolhouse are both listed in the National Register of Historic Places
The Association looks forward to seeing you there!