Museum frozen in time

By PAUL CARRIER, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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	Staff photo by Jack Milton The building housed offices and classrooms before becoming a museum in the 1920s. There's so much to see here, the curator isn't sure how many items the museum contains.
	Staff photo by Jack Milton Steven Lemieux of the L.C. Bates Museum in Hinckley talks about creatures that live in and around water to a group of Brownies from Madison. The museum houses large collections of taxidermic birds, fish and animals.
	ABOUT OUR SERIES Think you've seen all the sights of Maine? Maybe not. . . . This week we'll take you to some of the state's more remarkable - and sometimes overlooked - wonders. Here's an itinerary: Sunday: Machias Seal Island Monday: Old Sow Whirlpool Tuesday: Swan Island Wednesday: Pineland Thursday: Coos Canyon Today: L.C. Bates Museum Saturday: Moxie Falls LEARN MORE ONLINE: The L.C. Bates Museum Web site: www.gwh.org To view old photos of the Good Will-Hinckley Homes from the collection of the L. C. Bates Museum go to the Maine Memory Network: http://tinyurl.com Maine Archives and Museums maintains a list of natural history collections in the state: http://tinyurl.com The L.C. Bates Museum has some mastodon teeth. So does the Smithsonian: www.150.si.edu To top of story

HINCKLEY — The two mounted deer heads that eye each other from opposite sides of the entry way send a clear message about the L.C. Bates Museum. This is a place that hearkens back to a time when museums were more interested in displaying artifacts than in dazzling visitors with high-tech gimmicks. Call it old-fashioned, and the people who run the museum probably will thank you for the compliment. After all, the ancient knob-and-tube wiring that snakes along the interior walls is not an exhibit - it's actually part of the building's electrical system.

"It's really a museum of the early 20th century," said curator Deborah Staber. "So when we fix something, we try to fix it back rather than forwards."

The museum's retro look is as much of a draw as the thousands of stuffed animals, rocks, minerals, sculptures, busts, tools, bottles of seeds and one-of-a-kind curiosities that seem to fill every nook and cranny of the place. It's almost like sneaking into the musty attic of a house whose eccentric and obsessive owner crammed it with whatever caught his fancy.

There's so much to see here that Staber doesn't know how many items are in the building. Nor, for that matter, have staffers documented what all of them are. In some cases, Staber said, "we know how it got here but not exactly what it is."

Staber fully appreciates that the building has a personality of its own and is an exhibit unto itself. For example, she notes matter-of-factly that the structure, which looks like an old schoolhouse from the outside, is largely unheated in the winter. The three-story building housed offices and classrooms before it became a museum in the 1920s.

"In winter, we do become the coolest museum in Maine," Staber joked.

Similarly, although many of the old exhibit labels have been updated, Staber proudly points out one that is a throwback. The charmingly worded sign on a collection of rocks is as much fun, if not quite as educational, as the rocks themselves.

"This collection is exhibited not only for its scientific value," reads the sign describing some long-gone rock hound's obsession, "but as evidence of the worth of a side interest in an active business life."

The exhibits themselves are reminders that taxidermy was once a cornerstone of any museum.

Seven dioramas displaying birds from Acadia National Park highlight a bird room that contains everything from an eastern bluebird to a great blue heron. The king eider, the snowy owl, the bald eagle, the mourning dove - they're all here, together with a massive double-wattled cassowary, which a label describes as a native of New Guinea and northwestern Australia.

One case alone holds about 60 birds. Another contains some 20 owls.

Mounted deer and moose heads look down on a room containing what is thought to be one of the last caribou shot in Maine in the late 19th century. There are butterflies, bats and fish here, a working printing press from the mid-19th century, and a display case that contains more than 40 ash and sweetgrass baskets.

One room is full of horse-drawn carriages, carts and wagons in various stages of disrepair. There's a case of old tools that includes something called a shoulder buttress. Small, painted plaster sculptures feature the likenesses of President Abraham Lincoln, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Nearby, eye-level busts of presidents George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt as well as the Marquis de Lafayette stare at visitors.

And then there's the really quirky stuff.

A blue marlin caught by Ernest Hemingway. A fragment of the first trans-Atlantic cable. A 6-foot iron door from the old Somerset County Jail that was torn down in 1924. And the shaggy, wall-mounted head of Barney, a bison that arrived in Solon by train in the late 19th century as a gift to Herman Whipple from a grateful friend who hailed from South Dakota.

"Mrs. Whipple wouldn't allow Barney in the house," a sign explains, so the banished buffalo made his home in the Whipples' barn "for two generations."

"I just think it's great" because the displays are traditional and the building is architecturally appealing, said repeat visitor Keith Brann of Auburn, who praised the museum for remaining true to its roots.

"You don't see these things anyplace else," Brann said. "They expect you to be smart enough that you don't need to be led and you don't need to be entertained" in order to enjoy yourself.

Staff Writer Paul Carrier can be contacted at 622-7511 or at: