2026 – 2027 Exhibition:
Francis Hamabe’s Maine: A Life in Art
May 23 – October 12, 2026

Francis Hamabe’s Maine: A Life in Art explores the life and career of Francis Hamabe (1917 – 2002), who spent more than forty years living and working in Maine. Francis Hamabe’s Maine is truly a collaborative exhibition, with nearly every object, archival document, and photograph loaned to us for this first-of-its-kind career retrospective of Hamabe. Curated by Carl Little, a curator, art critic, and friend of Hamabe, Francis Hamabe’s Maine is a joyful exploration of an artist’s interpretation of Maine.

From Blue Hill to Castine to Machias, Hamabe’s artworks are a love letter to Maine. Hamabe’s career as a graphic designer, silkscreen artist, painter, cartoonist, and puppeteer had a lasting impact on his adoptive state of Maine. This exhibition follows his early life as a Japanese American living in Orange, New Jersey, to his service in World War II and the aftermath of Japanese internment, to his life as a working artist in downeast Maine. Hamabe cultivated a large network of friends and fellow artists, creating a generational legacy for Maine’s artists.

Hamabe was constantly creating works. Whether they were silkscreen prints, sumi ink drawings, or large-scale paintings, his artwork can be found all over the state and country. This exhibition features more than forty of his original artworks. He had a particularly large impact on the Blue Hill Peninsula through his art classes, which he taught in both private homes and public locations, including here in Castine. This exhibition includes several works of art done by his students in Castine, and his lasting influence is apparent in these works.

Francis Hamabe’s Maine is deeply indebted and grateful to the lenders of these works of art to the Castine Historical Society.