Center for Maine Contemporary Art

Center for Maine Contemporary Art CMCA —Center for Maine Contemporary Art: Advancing contemporary art in Maine through exhibitions and educational programs. www.cmcanow.org

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SAY WOW TO THE NEW CMCA

Experience the art of this generation and the next. CMCA’s exhibitions and educational programs are made to inspire and attract visitors of all ages and backgrounds. With its iconic sawtooth roofline, CMCA’s striking new building—designed by architect Toshiko Mori—provides exceptional exhibition space for presentation of work by contemporary artists. The complex also inclu

des a gift shop, an ArtLab classroom, and a courtyard open to the public. Located in the heart of Rockland’s downtown arts district, CMCA is in walking distance of the Farnsworth Art Museum and Wyeth Center, the Strand Theatre, and dozens of art galleries, restaurants, and hotels. Be ready to say wow!

Thank you to Boston Art Review and Jorge S. Arango for their recent profile of CMCA Curator Grant Wahlquist. “This is g...
06/17/2026

Thank you to Boston Art Review and Jorge S. Arango for their recent profile of CMCA Curator Grant Wahlquist.

“This is going to sound really grandiose and naïve, but I’m giving myself permission to say it,” declares Grant Wahlquist, curator at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) in Rockland. “I want to be part of shaping art history. That’s something I’ve learned from artists. Great artists want to be part of art history, and the incredible thing about being a curator is you get to be a huge part of making it.”

✍️: Jorge Arango
📷: Dana Clark

Read the full article at link in comments 🗿

MARC SWANSON // DEATH IS EXPENSIVE // The exhibition’s title is drawn from a line uttered by down-at-heel Southern belle...
06/13/2026

MARC SWANSON // DEATH IS EXPENSIVE // The exhibition’s title is drawn from a line uttered by down-at-heel Southern belle Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire: “How in the hell do you think all that sickness and dying was paid for? Death is expensive, Miss Stella!” In Streetcar, DuBois’s carefully maintained artifice—paste jewels passing for diamonds, borrowed elegance masking scarcity—functions as both a shield and a tenuous means of escape. The tension between luminous surface and underlying vulnerability is also present in Swanson’s work, which stages a parallel drama in materials: elevating the cheap, the decaying, or the everyday into objects of genuine and often melancholic beauty that never fully conceal their provisional or humble origins. Artifice is not deception but a necessary and sometimes defiant form of grace. As with Mike Kelley’s use of thrifted afghans and stuffed animals, Swanson insists on treating the ta**ry and provisional seriously, coaxing elegance from the overlooked without erasing its roots in impermanence, loss, and the working class.

On view through September 13. Plan your visit at the link the comments 🥀

Photos: Art Index

Marc Swanson
Untitled (Torch), 2026
Mixed media
56 × 38 x 16 inches

Marc Swanson
Windows, 2026
Epoxy clay, glass, paper, ink, metal, flowers, metal fringe 42.5 x 25.5 x 3 inches
His kind, 2025

Marc Swanson
Oil on canvas in wood artist frame
37.25 x 25.5 x 2 inches
Arrangement, 2025

Marc Swanson
Epoxy clay, paint, glass, paper, ink, metal, flowers 34 × 26 x 2.5 inches

Congratulations to Bianca Beck on their profile in Decor Maine Magazine 👀 Many works featured are included in their solo...
06/11/2026

Congratulations to Bianca Beck on their profile in Decor Maine Magazine 👀 Many works featured are included in their solo exhibition Eyes, on view at CMCA through September 6.

“Exploring dynamic themes from protest to procreation, Bianca stretches and subverts the raw materials of their mediums to constantly surprise the viewer. “Scale plays a huge role; the relationship of the viewer’s body to the size, mass, and power of a monumentally scaled work provokes a physical reckoning. The layering of biomorphic shapes and use of flfluorescent and discordant color schemes physically jars the viewer into alertness and awareness. I am a q***r nonbinary person, and I think there is a parallel to the way I relate to identity, my own sense of self, and materials and mediums. I feel it is essential and urgent to dissolve boundaries, binaries, and categories and embrace complexity. We contain flfluidity, complexity, and resilience. We contain all of this in every moment of our lives.”

✍️: Allison Paige

Summer hours are here 🌼 and CMCA is open 7 days a week! Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm | Sunday noon-5pmSee what’s on view in...
06/09/2026

Summer hours are here 🌼 and CMCA is open 7 days a week! Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm | Sunday noon-5pm

See what’s on view in our Summer Exhibitions, browse our shop, and stop by the CMCA ArtLab.

Learn more about upcoming events and plan your visit at the link in our bio 🔗

Abbey Williams’s solo exhibition Fugue is on view. Fugue is a highly musical rumination on our charged historical moment...
06/06/2026

Abbey Williams’s solo exhibition Fugue is on view.

Fugue is a highly musical rumination on our charged historical moment. A five-channel video installation displayed on horizontal monitors in freestanding black pedestals, Abbey Williams has reedited and “remixed” the work since its 2025 premiere in Basel for its American debut at CMCA—a recursive practice central to her process. Over the course of its nearly eight-minute run time, Fugue montages overhead shots of the artist flipping through oversized photobooks of classical architecture, her hands pawing at or caressing marble statues and columns as if they were living flesh. The work eventually pivots to images of the artist’s hands painting on the surface of monitors that she ultimately shatters with a hammer, creating illuminated fissures akin to lightning that she also dangerously caresses.

Learn more at the link in our bio.

FIRST FRIDAY INCOMING >>>>Rockland’s First Friday Artwalk is back and we hope to see you 4–7pm for free admission to our...
06/04/2026

FIRST FRIDAY INCOMING >>>>

Rockland’s First Friday Artwalk is back and we hope to see you 4–7pm for free admission to our Summer Exhibitions 🌞 Enjoy live music by in our courtyard from 5-7pm and tacos for purchase by .max

A special thank you to whose generous support makes First Friday possible.

Blanca Beck
Umbilical Brain, 2022
Acrylic and oil on wood panel, with artist-made aluminum frame 24 × 20 inches
Courtesy of the artist, Uffner & Liu, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art
Photo:

As CMCA marks the 10th anniversary of its iconic building, this year’s Art Party celebrates the people whose vision, ded...
06/01/2026

As CMCA marks the 10th anniversary of its iconic building, this year’s Art Party celebrates the people whose vision, dedication, and expertise have made it possible.

The 2026 CMCA Art Party honors architect Toshiko Mori, contractor Jay Fischer of Cold Mountain Builders, 2016 Board Chair Charlotte Dixon, and Trustee and Building Committee Chair Jack McKenney.

Join us Wednesday, July 8 from 6–9pm as we celebrate our honorees.

21 Winter St, Rockland ME 04841

Cocktails | Oyster Bar | Movable Feast | E. Wales Hospitality | Jolie Rogers Raw Bar | Flaura Flowers & Wine

Tickets available through the link in bio 🪩

Marc Swanson | Death is Expensive is on view. Taken as a whole, the exhibition contemplates the cost of loss in all its ...
05/29/2026

Marc Swanson | Death is Expensive is on view. Taken as a whole, the exhibition contemplates the cost of loss in all its manifestations. It recognizes death as not merely the end of a biological cycle but as the unraveling of relationships, systems, identities, and occasionally ecosystems, and in doing so invites us to acknowledge that the expense and extent of loss corresponds to the depth of love.

Learn more and plan your visit at the link in our bio 🕯️

Marc Swanson
For Renée, 2026
Wood, metal, archival tape, frames, paper, porcelain figurine, shells, flowers, metal tassels, mirror, latex and clay dust, lightbulbs, paste necklace
48 x 24 x 11 inches
Courtesy of the artist and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (Photo:

We really loved seeing you at our Summer Exhibitions opening reception! Thank you for coming! All four exhibitions are n...
05/27/2026

We really loved seeing you at our Summer Exhibitions opening reception! Thank you for coming! All four exhibitions are now on view 👀

BIANCA BECK | Eyes
WILL SEARS | The Third Field
MARC SWANSON | Death is Expensive
ABBEY WILLIAMS | Fugue

To learn more, visit the link in our bio 🥳

Address

21 Winter Street
Rockland, ME
04841

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 5pm
Tuesday 10am - 5pm
Wednesday 10am - 5pm
Thursday 10am - 5pm
Friday 10am - 5pm
Saturday 10am - 5pm
Sunday 12pm - 5pm

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(207) 701-5005

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