Monhegan Island is a portrait of resilience. Artists have captured it for 2 centuries.

Monhegan Island has captivated guests like me for hundreds of years.

Positioned 10 miles off Maine’s coast, the distant island’s pure magnificence strikes awe at each flip of its scant 1-square-mile measurement.

I first went with my mom, who cherished off-the-beaten-path adventures. I returned later as a reporter for the Monitor, interviewing the one lobster-woman on the island and sleuthing out a chef’s secret stew recipe.

However most day-trippers and adventurists are in all probability utterly unaware of an vital backstory of the charming island: its historical past of environmental renewal.

A brand new exhibition, “Artwork, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island: The Monhegan Wildlands,” is altering that. The present illuminates the island’s ecological journey from the final ice age to trendy occasions.

Indigenous artifacts, maps, scientific analysis, and the creations of a variety of artists assist inform the story. Works embrace these by Edward Hopper, Robert Henri, Jamie Wyeth, printmaker Barbara Putnam, and Lynne Drexler. The present is on view at Bowdoin Faculty Museum of Artwork till June 1 after which strikes to the island to summer time, so to talk, on the Monhegan Museum of Artwork & Historical past. There, viewers might be inspired to pair their artwork expertise with the character that impressed it.

That connection between atmosphere and canvas is how Bowdoin biology professor Barry Logan got here to be concerned. Dr. Logan has been touring to Monhegan for 20 years to check the island’s forest panorama, usually together with his college students in tow.

Of specific curiosity to him has been the dwarf mistletoe plant, which has wreaked havoc on the island’s white spruce bushes. (The parasite is understood to glom onto its host’s branches, siphoning off water and vitamins to outlive.)

These spruce bushes had colonized fields as soon as used for sheep farming. However for the reason that decline of white spruce forests, deciduous bushes, reminiscent of birch, aspen, and maple, have changed them.

This pure phenomenon, Professor Logan discovered, could be evidenced in artworks by a few of the island’s most illustrious painters, who depicted its results, seemingly unknowingly, on their canvases. For instance, in Hopper’s “Monhegan Panorama,” from the early twentieth century, a scrawny, lifeless white spruce tree is prominently painted towards the mighty, deep-blue ocean. Different works, Dr. Logan noticed, additionally bear witness to the altering panorama.

He says in an interview that he was struck by what he’d observed, and he approached administrators on the Bowdoin Faculty Museum of Artwork and Monhegan Museum of Artwork & Historical past. Collectively they determined to curate an exhibition that will inform the story of Monhegan’s environmental evolution.

“We now have two centuries of artists who’ve been portray this place, and we realized they may help us perceive its ecology,” says Frank Goodyear, co-director of the Bowdoin museum. “These artists are eager observers, and I’ve been impressed how the scientific knowledge matches what they depicted.”

Dr. Goodyear factors to Rockwell Kent’s “Solar, Manana, Monhegan,” which the artist painted from his island residence on Horn’s Hill in 1907. He revisited the spot 43 years later to incorporate the younger forest that had grown up in what was initially open pastureland.

The theme of ecological resilience spoke loudly to the curatorial group. “The phrase ‘resilience,’ which we positioned within the title with nice intention,” says Dr. Logan, “is supposed to convey that if one can place a forest in conservation, no matter its situation, it’s going to seemingly return and tackle a stupendous trajectory.”

They provide heaps of credit score to Monhegan Associates, a land belief group. It was based in 1954 by Ted Edison, one in all inventor Thomas Edison’s sons, who led an effort to amass and steward land exterior the city’s historic village. The arduous work to protect the wildlands was finished again within the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties, and now the group maintains them for the enjoyment of all.

“The actions of motivated people like Ted Edison could make an enormous distinction,” says Dr. Logan, “however he didn’t do it alone. It took a group.”

The wildlands make up about four-fifths of the island, near 400 acres, together with forests and 9 miles of trails.

“I typically really feel like I’m strolling by means of a portray right here, and now others will expertise that,” says Jennifer Pye, director of the Monhegan Museum of Artwork & Historical past. This summer time, she says, the paths will get their close-up, as viewers of the exhibit might be inspired to wander within the close by wildlands.

For instance, one would possibly view George Bellows’ “Cathedral Woods,” painted in 1913, after which step out onto that very same treasured path. “This work was a late addition to the exhibit, and it’s such a gem,” says Ms. Pye. “Bellows is best recognized for his crashing surf scenes, however this portray completely captures the darkish, quiet, nonetheless feeling of being in Cathedral Woods.”

There might be some adjustments from the Bowdoin present, she provides. For instance, the student-produced audio-and-visual results will not be wanted, since viewers might be immersed within the place the place these artworks originated. Additionally, the Monhegan venue is smaller, so not all the artworks and artifacts will make the journey.

One islander says the exhibit has modified the way in which he sees his residence. Doug Boynton, who has lived on Monhegan for 55 years (one in all about 40 year-round residents) and lobstered there for nearly as lengthy, says the present taught him just a few issues, notably concerning the island’s early historical past. It additionally modified the way in which he seems at artwork.

“You see artwork in all places right here, however you don’t actually consider it as a scientific software for documenting ecological adjustments,” says Mr. Boynton, who contributed a chapter to the exhibit catalog. “Now I notice what a stupendous software it’s!”

“Artwork, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island: The Monhegan Wildlands,” runs by means of June 1 on the Bowdoin Faculty Museum of Artwork. On July 1, it opens on the Monhegan Museum of Artwork & Historical past.