Summer 2023—Campus Updates

The College has made some big moves with regard to the campus and its buildings this past summer, including: 

• The observatory was relocated to a new central location in Pickard Field.
• Renovations at Pickard Field are ongoing and will result in three new multipurpose artificial turf fields, two new natural grass fields, and added lighting.
• Ladd House has been converted into an all-purpose building for student affairs offices, including offices and programming space.
• 240 Maine Street has been fully renovated to house the registrar and institutional research and consulting.
• New oak flooring has been installed in the main dining room of Thorne Hall.

Bowdoin hosted hundreds of people attending programs, courses, conferences, and performances:

•  There were nearly twenty residential programs, including a high school teacher training program in genomics sponsored by The Jackson Laboratory and a Watson Foundation conference for their 2020–2023 Watson Fellows.
• Bowdoin faculty–sponsored courses and conferences, including a four–week Ocean Optics course at the Schiller Coastal Studies Center coordinated by Collin Roesler, a weeklong gathering of over twenty-five videographic essayists on the theme of “Embodying the Video Essay” organized by Allison Cooper, and a multiday conference on nontraditional arthropod model systems coordinated by Hadley Horch.
• The Maine State Music Theatre staged four shows and a three-part concert series.
• The Bowdoin International Music Festival welcomed over 280 students to campus to learn and perform.

And there was lots of activity at the Bowdoin museums over the summer:

• The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum reopened this summer and received strong media coverage about the new building and its three new exhibitions: Iñuit Qiñiġaaŋi: Contemporary Inuit Photography, Collections and Recollections: Objects and the Stories They Tell, and At Home in the North.
• The Bowdoin College Museum of Art's summer exhibition, People Watching: Contemporary Photography since 1965, attracted many visitors and media attention over the summer. It explores the phenomenon of “people watching” as a recreational activity, an act of surveillance, a type of harassment, a sign of empathy, and a documentary form of expression. The exhibition runs through November 5.