About

The heart of Skowhegan is our school in Maine founded by artists in 1946. The School takes the form of a nine-week summer program in which emerging artists working in all forms and from diverse backgrounds live and work together on our rural campus as a community of peers in dialogue with resident and visiting artists (faculty), as well as staff (primarily practicing artists). The campus is a place where we coexist in generosity, self-discovery, curiosity, and discrepancy in order to create, experience, and understand art.

When the summer ends, we continue our mission through a variety of programs for wider audiences that use the School as a source of inspiration and provocation. From our space in New York (Skowhegan NYC) and beyond, we collaborate with artists and other practitioners on programs focusing on alternative ways of critical thinking and education; we foster community and facilitate engagement with alumni, faculty and collaborators; we transform and tend to our archive connecting intergenerational voices; we publish research in various formats; and most importantly, we share stories.

You can learn more about The School and how to apply. You can read, learn and listen to the voices, texts and projects of the different practitioners who have participated in Skowhegan through The Library. You can Support our work and the future of artmaking, and you can also join us for Public Programs.

Skowhegan was founded in 1946 by four artists, Willard “Bill” Cummings, Sidney Simon, Henry Varnum Poor, and Charles Cutler, and its conception was deeply connected to the explosive creative energy that characterized postwar American culture at the time. The idea for a school developed during World War II, when Cummings, an enlisted New England portrait painter serving within the Army Art War Unit, nurtured a vision for a summer program for talented young artists. His notion was rooted in the belief that artists learn best from other artists, drawn from his personal experiences as a young person studying with established artists in Paris, Boston, and New York before the war. With the input and collaboration of fellow servicemen Simon and Poor, the enthusiastic partnership of his wife Millie and his parents Willard and Helen Cummings, and strong local networks in Maine and New York, the group launched the School on the Cummings family farm in Madison, Maine.

Although Skowhegan’s reputation continued to rise, the founders, along with the small staff and board, struggled to keep pace with the accelerating needs of the growing school. By the mid-1970s, both Cummings and Poor had died and Skowhegan was much beloved, but under-resourced and in need of leadership. Over the ensuing decade, a cadre of devoted artists—Driskell, Jacquette, Katz, Simon, as well as Janet Fish, Bill King, and William T. Williams among them—and generous patrons—including Mildred Brinn, John Payson, the Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston, and the NEA (through a crucial challenge grant to create an endowment)—strengthened Skowhegan. They formalized the School’s unique dual leadership structure in which an artist board—the Governors— oversee the educational program, while a Board of Trustees serve as fiduciaries and fundraisers. A Joint Executive Committee, composed of Governors and Trustees, was created to consider all major decisions, and dual director positions corresponding to each board were established to work together on all aspects of the School. 

Skowhegan evolves to support the changing needs of artists, and our campus has grown to respond to the ever-expanding bounds of artistic practice. We built dedicated spaces for artists working across and between disciplines, such as a media lab, flex performance space, ceramics shop, a black box for sound production, and an expanded library, while maintaining our beloved fresco program and sculpture shop. For our 75th Anniversary in 2021, we added housing, studio, and community facilities to ensure that campus functions successfully for artists of many backgrounds and needs. We grew the endowment to protect the School’s future and creative independence. And we developed important environmental partnerships with our neighbors on Lake Wesserunsett to protect the rural landscape that has been so central to Skowhegan’s identity and experience. While we return home to Maine each summer, we also have a permanent space in New York that opened in 2014 where our archives are accessible and public programs take place throughout the rest of the year to share our pedagogy with all who are interested to learn. 

Designed by, and for artists, this practice of curiosity and creativity is at our core. Each new class of artists enables Skowhegan to grow and change, and its polyvocal histories—along with our understanding of them—deepen with every passing year. 

Generations of artists have participated in Skowhegan as participants (students) and faculty. Through this index you can learn more about who attended.

We keep in touch with our community well beyond the summer, and celebrate their growth and achievements through our Community News.

Skowhegan is a collective endeavor, from our mission and pedagogies to how we are organized as an institution. The Board of Governors is composed of past participants and faculty artists who work closely with the directors to oversee the School. The Board of Trustees have a fiduciary responsibility while supporting and providing insight into the School’s future. Together, we ensure that the mission and ethic of Skowhegan are fulfilled.

Thank you for your interest! We do not have any open positions at this time.