The Ogunquit Museum of American Art stands on a bluff above Narrow Cove at the far end of Shore Road, ten minutes' walk from Perkins Cove, with three acres of lawn and sculpture running down to the water. It holds more than 3,000 works and is rated 4.7 out of 5 across nearly 500 reviews. The setting is the best of any art museum in Maine, and the collection is here for a specific reason.
The short answer
543 Shore Road, Ogunquit, with its own parking lot — a rare thing in this town. The season runs roughly mid-April to mid-November; it closes for the winter. Give it ninety minutes: an hour inside, half an hour on the lawn. Current hours, admission and exhibitions are on ogunquitmuseum.org.
The single best thing you can do here is walk out the back. The galleries open onto a sloping lawn with sculpture set into it and the Atlantic filling the horizon, and there is a bench at the bottom worth the price of entry on its own.
What the collection holds
Over 3,000 objects — paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints and photographs — from the late 1800s to the present, weighted toward early 20th-century American modernism. The museum collects around the artists who worked in this village, and the roll call is serious: Marsden Hartley, Walt Kuhn, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Peggy Bacon, Robert Laurent, Charles Woodbury, Hamilton Easter Field, William and Marguerite Zorach, Rockwell Kent, Charles Burchfield, Will Barnet, Jack Levine.
Only part of the permanent collection is on view at a time. Changing exhibitions run through the season, so what hangs in July may be gone by October. Check the current show if you are coming for something specific.
The sculpture is outdoors and permanent, and it is the part most visitors remember. Pieces are placed on the lawn with room around them, angled at the water rather than at each other.
Why an art museum is in Ogunquit
Because this was one of the first art colonies in America, and for about fifty years it mattered.
It starts with Charles Herbert Woodbury, a Boston painter who came in the 1890s, bought property, and opened a summer school teaching landscape and marine painting. His method was to paint outdoors, fast, from direct observation, and students came north by the hundreds. Ogunquit had the raw material: a working fishing cove, dramatic surf, cheap lodging, and light painters kept describing as different.
Then came the second school, and the split that made the place important. Around 1911 Hamilton Easter Field — critic, collector, and one of the earliest American champions of European modernism — founded the Summer School of Graphic Arts in Perkins Cove, converting fish shacks into studios. Field taught the new thing: Cubism, folk art, sculpture, abstraction. For two decades Ogunquit had two competing art schools within a mile of each other, one traditional and one modernist, and the artists who came through Field's shacks — Kuniyoshi, Kuhn, Laurent, Bacon — went on to shape American modernism. Laurent, Field's protégé and adopted son, inherited the cove property and stayed.
The museum is the colony's memorial to itself. Henry Strater studied under Field in 1919 and spent the interwar years in Paris among the Lost Generation — he boxed with Hemingway and painted him — then settled in Ogunquit in 1925. In 1951 he bought the oceanfront land at Narrow Cove, once owned by Woodbury, and hired the Boston architect Charles S. Worley Jr. It opened in July 1953 as the Museum of Art of Ogunquit and took its current name in 1992.
That is why the building is low, glassed toward the sea, and modest. It was built to a painter's brief, not a civic committee's, and the point was always the view.
Planning your visit
- Where: 543 Shore Rd, at the southern end of Ogunquit past Perkins Cove, with on-site parking.
- Walking: You can walk in along the Marginal Way and through Perkins Cove — a good approach, and it solves the summer parking problem.
- Season: Closed in winter — in Ogunquit in February, this is not an option.
- How long: Ninety minutes, longer if the weather is good enough to sit outside.
The honest drawback: it is a small museum, and on a fine day the grounds outperform the galleries. Expecting the scale of a city institution, you will be through the interior in forty minutes. The depth is in early modernism and the Ogunquit colony specifically — this is not a survey of American art and does not pretend to be. Come for what it actually does, on a clear day.
What else is close
- Lobster Point Lighthouse, Ogunquit (4.6, 547 reviews) — the small light on the Marginal Way, half a mile toward town.
- The Lobster Shack, Ogunquit (4.6, 1,259 reviews) — in Perkins Cove, a few minutes' walk, and the best-rated of the cove's lobster options.
- M.C. Perkins Cove, Ogunquit (4.3, 717 reviews) — the sit-down dinner option on the water in the cove.
- Barnacle Billy's, Ogunquit (4.2, 2,098 reviews) — the cove institution, busy, and rated about how institutions usually are.
- Ogunquit Playhouse, Ogunquit (4.8, 1,498 reviews) — a mile north on Main Street, one of the country's best-known summer theaters. See the guide.
- Ogunquit Beach, Ogunquit (4.7, 560 reviews) — the three-mile sand beach at the mouth of the Ogunquit River, and the town's other beaches beyond it.
FAQ
How long does it take to see the Ogunquit Museum of American Art?
About ninety minutes, split between galleries and grounds. The interior is compact enough to cover in under an hour; the sculpture garden and the lawn above Narrow Cove extend the visit, and in good weather people stay much longer.
Is the Ogunquit Museum of American Art open year round?
No. The season runs roughly mid-April to mid-November. Confirm current dates on ogunquitmuseum.org before planning a shoulder-season visit.
Can you walk to the Ogunquit Museum of American Art from town?
Yes, and it is the better way to arrive. Take the Marginal Way south along the cliffs from Ogunquit Beach to Perkins Cove, then continue up Shore Road — a bit under two miles from the village center. The museum also has its own lot if you drive.
Which artists are in the Ogunquit Museum of American Art collection?
It centers on American modernists and artists tied to the Ogunquit art colony: Marsden Hartley, Walt Kuhn, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Peggy Bacon, Robert Laurent, Charles Woodbury, Hamilton Easter Field, the Zorachs, Rockwell Kent and Charles Burchfield among them. Only a portion is on view at any one time, alongside changing exhibitions.
