Current Exhibits
Our Core Exhibit
People of the First Light
Our core exhibit, People of the First Light, shares a wide variety of content and perspectives around more than 12,000 years of history, conflict, adaptation, and survival in the Wabanaki homeland.
Visit the page for People of the First Light to learn more.
Current Exhibits
In the Shadow of the Eagle
At a moment where the United States marks 250 years since its founding, this contemporary art exhibit aims to share a greater understanding of Wabanaki Nations’ place within our ongoing national narrative. The exhibit title is drawn from co-curator Donna Loring’s (Penobscot Nation) book that candidly chronicles time spent as a Tribal Representative for Maine. Joining the curatorial team are historian Dr. Darren Ranco (Penobscot Nation) and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Curator Siera Hyte (Cherokee Nation). Using the Semiquincentennial and Wabanaki involvement in the Revolutionary War as a jumping off point, In the Shadow of the Eagle focuses on important themes such as military service, treaties, and self-governance. The exhibition features incredible new artworks by leading Wabanaki artists alongside important historical belongings, and loans of work by important Native artists from outside the Dawnlands.
This exhibition was made possible with the generous support of the Terra Foundation for American Art.
The exhibit opens in May 2025 and will run through October 2026.
Commissioned Works
James Eric Francis, Sr., Penobscot
Caleb Hoffman, Cherokee Nation
Geo Soctomah Neptune, Passamaquoddy
Lokotah Sanborn, Penobscot Descent
Other Contemporary Artists
Maya Tihtiyas Attean, Penobscot
Eric Otter Bacon, Passamaquoddy
Diane Campbell, Passamaquoddy
Doris Chapman, Passamaquoddy
Barry Dana, Penobscot
Emma Hassencahl-Perley, Wolastoqey
Theresa Neptune Gardner, Passamaquoddy
Maria Girouard, Penobscot
G. Peter Jemison, Seneca Nation
Clara Neptune Keezer, Passamaquoddy
Rick Love, Penobscot
Dominic Polchies, Penobscot
Tim Shay, Penobscot
Alan Syliboy, Mi’kmaq
Fred Tomah, Maliseet
Marie Watt, Seneca Nation
Nelson White, Mi’kmaq
Most exhibitions ask you to look, to absorb, and to think outside yourself. Four Directions asks something different. Penobscot/Passamaquoddy artist Maya Tihtiyas Attean has created an immersive installation featuring large-scale photographs printed on fabric, depicting plants and water from Wabanakik, the ancestral homeland of the Wabanaki Nations. Visitors are surrounded on all sides while Wabanaki language moves through a soundscape designed to blur the line between memory and presence. The scale and immersion are intentional. You’re not meant to stand outside this work and consider it; you’re meant to feel, however briefly, what it is like to be held by a landscape that has sustained people for thousands of years.
“Our history with this land is much deeper than the concept of the United States, penetrating concepts of linear time. In this installation, I explore the spiritual energy and elements of the land that ground us into Wabanakik by using imagery of plants and water, enforced by meditative soundscapes that utilize Wabanaki language to blend memory with sound.”
~Maya Tihtiyas Attean
Current Exhibits
Contemporary Wabanaki Photography
What does it look like when Wabanaki artists turn the camera on their own lives, their own land, and their own faces?
Holding the Light: Contemporary Wabanaki Photography gathers eight answers to that question from eight photographers: Maya Tihtiyas Attean, Nolan Altvater, Danikah Chartier, Nate Gaffney, Jared Lank, Ann Pollard Ranco, Lokotah Sanborn, and Desmond Simon. With still photography, film, wall installations, and cyanotype, these images come together to make an argument that is quiet, precise, and unmistakable: that Wabanaki cultures are living, contemporary, and being actively shaped by the people who belong to them.
Come see what they chose to show you.
The exhibit opens in May 2026 and will run through October 2027.
Waponahki Student Art
A collaboration with Maine Indian Education,the Boys & Girls Clubs of Border Towns, and the Abbe Museum, the annual Waponahki Student Art Show brings together a wonderful variety of art created by Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Maliseet, and Mi’kmaq students from early childhood education through high school. The styles, media, and images vary throughout the exhibition, but place, culture, and identity have a strong presence in these original works.
The Abbe Museum is honored to present this year's artwork digitally for audiences who aren't able to view it in person.Click here to view the gallery!
Thank you to the students, teachers, and school staff for making this incredible exhibit possible!
The exhibit opens in May 2026 and will run through October 2026.
Penobscot Nation Patriot: Charles Norman Shay
At just 19, Charles Norman Shay - a Penobscot Nation combat medic - pulled wounded men from the surf at Omaha Beach on D-Day, working under relentless fire while the outcome of the war was still uncertain. He received the Silver Star, survived a German POW camp, and served in Korea. After decades living quietly in Vienna, he returned in his seventies to Indian Island, where he spent the last chapter of a very long life making sure that the service of Native veterans and the traditions of his Penobscot Nation were not forgotten.
France awarded him its highest honor, and a memorial park overlooking Omaha Beach now features a granite turtle carved by his nephew. Charles Norman Shay also founded Maine’s Native American Veterans Day and lived to the age of 101. This exhibition is a spotlight on a man whose life connected D-Day to Indian Island, Omaha Beach to Wabanaki ancestral memory, and military service to cultural survival.
Dr. Abbe's Museum*
This exhibits focus on the archaeology of Maine and is reminiscent of the way the it would have been displayed the Museum first opened in 1928. See how bone and stone tools and pottery were made, explore artifacts from the museum's early collections, and find examples of artifacts from many towns around eastern Maine.
*The components of this exhibit are from our original location in Acadia National park, which is currently closed to the public.
Interpretive Framework
Read the Abbe Museum’s Interpretive Framework.