Why Maine’s Monhegan Island is a portrait of resilience

Monhegan Island has captivated visitors like me for centuries.

Located 10 miles off Maine’s coast, the remote island’s natural beauty strikes awe at every turn of its scant 1-square-mile size.

I first went with my mother, who loved off-the-beaten-path adventures. I returned later as a reporter for the Monitor, interviewing the only lobster-woman on the island and sleuthing out a chef’s secret stew recipe.

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Maine’s Monhegan Island is a scant square mile in size. But don’t underestimate it. The island has a thing or two to teach the world about mistletoe – and resilience.

But most day-trippers and adventurists are probably completely unaware of an important backstory of the charming island: its history of environmental renewal.

A new exhibition, “Art, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island: The Monhegan Wildlands,” is changing that. The show illuminates the island’s ecological journey from the last ice age to modern times.

Indigenous artifacts, maps, scientific research, and the creations of a range of artists help tell the story. Works include those by Edward Hopper, Robert Henri, Jamie Wyeth, printmaker Barbara Putnam, and late Monhegan resident Lynne Drexler. The show is on view at Bowdoin College Museum of Art until June 1 and then moves to the island to summer, so to speak, at the Monhegan Museum of Art & History. There, viewers will be encouraged to pair their art experience with the nature that inspired it.

That connection between environment and canvas is how Bowdoin biology professor Barry Logan came to be involved. Dr. Logan has been traveling to Monhegan for 20 years to study the island’s forest landscape, often with his students in tow.

Lauren Owens Lambert/Reuters/File

Monhegan Island is 10 miles off the coast of Maine. Only about 40 people live on the island year-round.

Of particular interest to him has been the dwarf mistletoe plant, which has wreaked havoc on the island’s white spruce trees. (The parasite is known to glom onto its host’s branches, siphoning off water and nutrients to survive.)

Those spruce trees had colonized fields once used for sheep farming. But since the decline of white spruce forests, deciduous trees, such as birch, aspen, and maple, have replaced them.

This natural phenomenon, Professor Logan found, can be evidenced in artworks by some of the island’s most illustrious painters, who depicted its effects, likely unknowingly, on their canvases. For example, in Hopper’s “Monhegan Landscape,” from the early 20th century, a scrawny, lifeless white spruce tree is prominently painted against the mighty, deep-blue ocean. Other works, Dr. Logan observed, also bear witness to the changing landscape.

He says in an interview that he was struck by what he’d noticed, and he approached directors at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and Monhegan Museum of Art & History. Together they decided to curate an exhibition that would tell the story of Monhegan’s environmental evolution.

“We have two centuries of artists who have been painting this place, and we realized they can help us understand its ecology,” says Frank Goodyear, co-director of the Bowdoin museum. “These artists are keen observers, and I have been impressed how the scientific data matches what they depicted.”

Courtesy of The Johnson Museum. Edward Hopper © 2023 Heirs Of Josephine N. Hopper / Licensed By Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

In “Monhegan Landscape,” painted in the early 1900s, artist Edward Hopper captures a lone, diminished white spruce tree. As white spruce on the island have succumbed to dwarf mistletoe, other trees, such as birch and maple, have grown in their place.

Dr. Goodyear points to Rockwell Kent’s “Sun, Manana, Monhegan,” which the artist painted from his island home on Horn’s Hill in 1907. He revisited the spot 43 years later to include the young forest that had grown up in what was originally open pastureland.

The theme of ecological resilience spoke loudly to the curatorial team. “The word ‘resilience,’ which we placed in the title with great intention,” says Dr. Logan, “is meant to convey that if one can place a forest in conservation, whatever its condition, it will likely return and take on a beautiful trajectory.”

They give heaps of credit to Monhegan Associates, a land trust organization. It was founded in 1954 by Ted Edison, one of inventor Thomas Edison’s sons, who led an effort to acquire and steward land outside the town’s historic village. The hard work to preserve the wildlands was done back in the 1950s and 1960s, and now the group maintains them for the enjoyment of all.

“The actions of motivated individuals like Ted Edison can make a huge difference,” says Dr. Logan, “but he didn’t do it alone. It took a community.”

The wildlands make up about four-fifths of the island, close to 400 acres, including forests and 9 miles of trails.

“I sometimes feel like I’m walking through a painting here, and now others will experience that,” says Jennifer Pye, director of the Monhegan Museum of Art & History. This summer, she says, the trails will get their close-up, as viewers of the exhibit will be encouraged to wander in the nearby wildlands.

Collection of Stephen S. Fuller and Susan D. Bateson

“Glory of Fall,” circa 1930, by Constance Cochrane, captures Monhegan Island in bloom.

For example, one might view George Bellows’ “Cathedral Woods,” painted in 1913, and then step out onto that same treasured trail. “This work was a late addition to the exhibit, and it’s such a gem,” says Ms. Pye. “Bellows is better known for his crashing surf scenes, but this painting perfectly captures the dark, quiet, still feeling of being in Cathedral Woods.”

There will be some changes from the Bowdoin show, she adds. For example, the student-produced audio-and-visual effects will no longer be needed, since viewers will be immersed in the place where those artworks originated. Also, the Monhegan venue is smaller, so not all of the artworks and artifacts will make the trip.

One islander says the exhibit has changed the way he sees his home. Doug Boynton, who has lived on Monhegan for 55 years (one of about 40 year-round residents) and lobstered there for almost as long, says the show taught him a few things, particularly about the island’s early history. It also changed the way he looks at art.

“You see art everywhere here, but you don’t really think of it as a scientific tool for documenting ecological changes,” says Mr. Boynton, who contributed a chapter to the exhibit catalog. “Now I realize what a beautiful tool it is!”

“Art, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island: The Monhegan Wildlands,” runs through June 1 at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. On July 1, it opens at the Monhegan Museum of Art & History.

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