Press Room

The Abbe Museum is a cultural institution with two locations in Bar Harbor, Maine, on Mount Desert Island, dedicated to illuminating and advancing greater understanding of and support for Wabanaki Nations’ heritage, living cultures, and homelands. 

The museum is led by a Wabanaki-majority Board of Trustees and works in consultation with representatives of the Tribal Nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy, including Maliseet, Mi'kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot peoples, centering their voices in exhibitions and programming. A distinctive institutional commitment is the museum's emphasis on living Wabanaki cultures and contemporary expression, explicitly moving away from framing it solely as historical.

Founded in 1926 by Dr. Robert Abbe, a New York physician and longtime summer resident of Bar Harbor, the museum opened on August 14, 1928, as a private trailside museum at Sieur de Monts Spring in what is now Acadia National Park. In 1997, the Abbe purchased the former YMCA building in downtown Bar Harbor, and a $6 million capital campaign funded its renovation and expansion into a 17,000-square-foot museum. The downtown location opened on September 29, 2001.

Since 2015, the Abbe Museum has been recognized as a national leader in museum decolonization — the process of restructuring institutional practices, governance, and interpretation to center Indigenous authority and cultural self-determination. In 2026, the museum launched a refreshed visual identity that reflects an updated mission, vision, and values.

• Founded:  1926; opened August 14, 1928

• Downtown Location:  26 Mount Desert Street, Bar Harbor, Maine 04609

• National Park Location:  Sieur de Monts Spring, Acadia National Park (currently closed for restoration; expected to reopen in 2028)

• Website:  abbemuseum.org

• Mission:  To illuminate and advance greater understanding of and support for Wabanaki Nations' heritage, living cultures, and homelands.

• Vision:  A profound shift in understanding, respect, and support for sovereign Wabanaki Nations leads us all into a more thriving and equitable future.

• Core Values:  Community, Respect, Responsibility, Creativity

• Governance:  Led by a Wabanaki-majority Board of Trustees

• Executive Director:  Betsy Richards, citizen of the Cherokee Nation (appointed July 2022)

• Collections:  More than 50,000 objects representing approximately 12,000 years of Native cultures and history in Maine, including the world's largest and best-documented collection of Maine Native American basketry

• Key Programs:  Rotating and permanent exhibitions, public programs, educational programming, community conversations, artist markets, Wabanaki curatorial fellows program, and the Dawnland Festival of Arts & Ideas held annually on the second weekend of July 

• Flagship Festival:  Dawnland Festival of Arts & Ideas: a two-day festival held annually on the second weekend of July on the campus of the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor; free and open to the public

The Abbe Museum centers Wabanaki cultures as living, dynamic, and contemporary. The museum's institutional commitment explicitly moves away from framing Indigenous culture as solely historical. We ask that coverage reflect this: the museum does not "preserve" culture, but illuminates it in active partnership with the communities who carry it forward.