Facility Study

Facility Study

Facility Study

Arctic Panorama

The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum was established in 1967, and the Arctic Studies Center was added in 1985. The Museum's collections reflect the long tradition of work in the Arctic by Bowdoin faculty, students, and alumni that began in the 1860s and continues to this day. The Museum is named in honor of two famous Arctic exporers and Bowdoin alumni - Robert E. Peary (Class of 1877) and Donald B. MacMillan (Class of 1898). The Center links the Museum's resources to teaching and research efforts.

The Museum collections include Arctic exploration equipment, natural history specimens, and art and anthropological material produced primarily by Inuit of Labrador, Baffin Island, and Greenland. The Museum also has extensive holdings of historic and anthropological photographs and films, as well as a large archive of exploration-related letters, ship logs, and journals.

The Museum is currently located in Hubbard Hall, a prominent building on campus that was originally the library. It shares Hubbard with three academic departments, the computer center, and the library. The Museum occupies portions of three floors. Exhibit production space, secondary storage, and the archaeology laboratory are in three other buildings.

The amount of space (6,265 net assignable square feet) allocated to the Museum and its programs is insufficient and does not support the Museum's mission. Gallery space is severely constrained, which limits exhibition potential. The Museum spaces are not contiguous, creating control and security problems. The marginal climate control is not up to present-day museum standards, adversely affecting the collections. In addition, affiliate research, education programs, and outreach initiatives are severely hampered by space deficiencies.

The firm of Dober, Lidsky, Craig and Associates, Inc. was contacted in 2003, to conduct a facility study for the Museum in order to address some of these space deficiencies and to put into action the initial phase of a plan for a new building to house the Arctic Museum. For more information on the Museum's facility plan, check the links on the right.