Established in 1946 as the University Art Collection, the Museum of Art is the only collection of fine art owned by the citizens of the State of Maine. The museum’s collections contain over 6,000 works of art, with strength in regional artists and 20th century American artists’ works of art on paper.

The museum offers to the public an ambitious program of exhibitions, as well as access to over 15% of the collection in offices and other public spaces throughout the University of Maine, Orono campus. Outreach programs include the Vincent Hartgen Museums by Mail traveling art exhibit program, now in its 45th year: nearly 50 suitcase exhibits of original art which travel around the state each year. The museum’s collection of over 6,000 works of art is divided into several sub-collections: Museum, Campus, Portrait, and Traveling.

The Museum Collection, while numbering slightly less than half of the total collections, accounts for nearly 80% of the total value of the collection. It includes work by: Giovanni Piranesi, William Hogarth, George Inness, Alfred Bricher, Mary Cassatt, Honoré Daumier, Diego Rivera, Grant Wood, William Gropper, and Reginald Marsh.

The Museum Collection also holds artworks by such Maine artists as Winslow Homer, John Marin, Berenice Abbott, Alex Katz, Emily Muir, Carl Sprinchorn, Bernard Langlais, Louise Nevelson, Waldo Peirce, Leo Meissner, Dahlov Ipcar, Neil Welliver, and Andrew Weyth. . Within the Museum Collection, there are: book/manuscripts, drawings, paintings, photographs, posters, prints, and sculptures.

In addition to a fine collection of nearly 90 paintings and World War II political cartoons by William Gropper, the Museum collection includes over 250 posters from World War I & World War II.

Robert Venn Carr, Jr. Collection: The significant collection of nearly 300 modern and contemporary prints given by Robert Venn Carr, Jr., Class of 1944, includes works by Pablo Picasso, Josef Albers, Alexander Calder, Käthe Kollwitz, Willem de Kooning, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Joan Miró, and Robert Delaunay.

For more information about the Museum, its exhibitions, programs, and
hours, go to http://umma.umaine.edu.