Wabanaki Guides — Abbe Museum | Porcupine Design
The Wabanaki Guides exhibit was a collaboration between myself, Carrie Graham, Allison Shank and Raney Bench for the Abbe Museum. This is a celebratory exhibit that shares stories of Native Guides and their patrons as they experienced the wilderness of Maine together.
From the Abbe Website:
“Wabanaki Guides focuses on the legacy of Wabanaki people serving as guides for European and American explorers, cartographers, tourists and artists from the 1600s to the present day. Visitors will be invited along for a simulated canoe ride down a Maine river. The journey will shine a spotlight on ways in which Wabanaki knowledge of land and waterways influenced Maine’s early visitors and illustrate how this legacy is linked to the modern-day tribes, tourism and environmental sustainability in Maine.
“Visitors will “climb into a canoe with their guide” and begin their journey. Along the way, they will stop at “portages” on the river bank. At each portage, visitors will learn about the various things a guide needs to consider when planning a trip and what one might expect to encounter along the way. The exhibit will focus on the following themes: mapping, tracking, tourism and economics. Stories and historic accounts from various view points will weave throughout the exhibit incorporating the voices of Wabanaki guides both past and present as well as explorers, artists and cartographers such as Henry David Thoreau and Joseph Treat.”
Allison Shank and I produced the main art for this exhibit as well as produced the panels and installation of the exhibit at the under the vision of each other, Raney Bench, and Carrie Graham. The main image was derived from a photography taken by David Moses Bridges.
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