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By Cipperly Good, Richard Saltonstall Jr. Curator of Maritime History

Over the past couple of years, Penobscot Marine Museum has made a concerted effort to catalog, organize, and provide access to our nautical chart collection. Knowing what we have, its location in storage, and what makes each chart unique has greatly enhanced our ability to assist researchers, enrich our exhibits and programming, and help spread the stories of the people who used these navigational tools. Thanks to an ongoing fundraising effort, we have taken the next step in creating broader access to this important collection through digitization.

While we have completed funding for the rig, now we need to raise more funds to digitize, process, and upload the images to the web. If you would like to help make our dreams a reality, please consider a donation.

By Cipperly Good, Richard Saltonstall Jr. Curator of Maritime History

As part of their funding for the reprint of Maine on Glass, The Albert B. Glickman and Judy Glickman Lauder Foundation stipulated that a copy of the book should be given to all Maine libraries, including those on islands. When our curator Cipperly Good learned of this, she took it as a sailing challenge she could not resist. Over two different cruises, Cipperly visited six island libraries. Maine on Glass features images from the Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Company Collection housed at PMM. Many of the historic library buildings can be found in that collection, so Cipperly pulled some of these historic images together to showcase alongside images from her deliveries. 

Adopt-a-Slide: The Eliot Elisofon Collection Campaign

By Kevin Johnson, Photo Archivist

We are a month into our effort to raise the funds to process the collection of photos by world renown Life Magazine photographer, Eliot Elisofon, and off to a good start! We have raised just under $2,000 toward our goal of $14,000 to digitize and catalog nearly 2,000 slides and negatives shot by Elisofon between 1940-1970, on or around Vinalhaven. If you are not familiar with Elisofon by name, you are probably familiar with his photographs. His 1941 cover photo of General Patten was the first color cover photo used by Life Magazine. In addition, his work in Africa is housed at the National Museum of African Art. PMM is proud to be the home for his Maine photographs. Recent articles in Maine Boats Homes and Harbors and the Working Waterfront have introduced the collection and our fundraising campaign. To meet our goal, we are asking for your support. Each $10 donation will "adopt" a negative or slide. As the negatives are adopted we will process them and get them online. A credit line in each database record will acknowledge who adopted it. Can you help?

Kosti Ruohomaa Collection October 2023

By Matt Wheeler, Digital Collections Curator

Ruohomaa enrolled in art school and left his parents’ farm after graduating from high school; the allure of a life fueled by creative expression was enough for him to break with his father’s expectations that he take over the blueberry operation and keep walking in the agrarian footsteps of his family. However, he never lost his deep fondness for ordinary people and the poetry he saw in their lives. This loyalty inspired assignments like his visit to Enfield, New Hampshire to observe grassroots democracy in a small town. At this 1954 town meeting, residents made the pivotal decision to replace the town’s aging wooden covered bridge with a modern concrete one.

Also this month, we’re publishing photos Ruohomaa took in Calais, Maine and St. Stephen, New Brunswick in the early years of his Black Star affiliation. The towns straddle an international border, but are separated only by a short trip across the St. Croix river. The piece highlights the interwoven existence of the two places and their inhabitants, and four of the photos were used in a 1946 Saturday Evening Post article penned by J.C. Furnas.



To view the new content, visit the museum’s Kosti Ruohomaa site.