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“Typewriter Eraser” (1977) by Claes Oldenburg.

enlarge Courtesy of Colby College Museum of Art

“City Point, Vinalhaven” (1937-38) by Marsden Hartley

enlarge Courtesy of Colby College Museum of Art

“Stonington, Maine” (1923) by John Marin, in watercolor and charcoal on paper.

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“Twilight” (1977) by Alex Katz

enlarge Courtesy of Colby College Museum of Art

“Tompkins Park, Brooklyn” (1887) by William Merritt Chase

enlarge Courtesy of Colby College Museum of Art

Winslow Homer’s “The Trapper” was the first piece acquired by the Colby College Museum of Art, in 1949 as a gift – 10 years before the museum opened and some 80 years after Homer made the painting.

IF YOU GO

"ART AT COLBY: Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Colby College Museum of Art"

WHERE: Colby College Museum of Art, 5600 Mayflower Hill, Waterville

WHEN: Through Feb. 21

ADMISSION: Free

HOURS: 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday; noon to 4:30 p.m. Sunday. (The museum is closed today for maintenance.)

MORE INFORMATION: 859-5600; www.colby.edu/museum

WATERVILLE —Considering that the first piece of art it ever acquired was Winslow Homer's oil-on-canvas painting "The Trapper," the Colby College Museum of Art has always aimed high.

Homer completed "The Trapper" in 1870 on his first trip to the Adirondacks. The painting – one of two by the artist of a nearly identical scene – depicts a trapper standing on a tree trunk that has fallen into a lake.

The setting is calm, even pristine. The still lake, with lilies in the foreground, reflects a distant island. The man stands on the log, his canoe at the side and paddle in hand, presumably attempting to lure a deer.

A masterpiece? Perhaps.

Better that we leave that debate to the art historians and scholars. More to the point, the painting represents the storied and ambitious history of the Colby museum.

This summer, the museum on Mayflower Hill in Waterville celebrates its legacy with an overarching and eye-popping exhibition, "Art at Colby: Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Colby College Museum of Art." It is the largest exhibition the museum has ever mounted, and arguably the most significant fine-art exhibition in the state of Maine, at least in recent memory.

Granted, that's a highly subjective statement. But the argument has merit given the scope of the exhibition. It's a big show with many major pieces of work. Further, the exhibition says as much about Colby as a collecting institution and its aggressive, almost single-minded devotion to acquiring great art as it does about the art itself.

"Art at Colby" includes hundreds of pieces by some of the most significant names in American and European art, and it highlights Colby's history by focusing on the museum's depths: American and European art from 18th and 19th centuries, contemporary and modern art, and ancient art and artifacts.

Museum director Sharon Corwin and her staff have packed gallery after gallery with paintings by the figures who have populated textbooks for decades: Gilbert Stuart, Albert Bierstadt, John La Farge, James McNeill Whistler, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Singer Sargent, George Inness, Mary Cassatt, Robert Henri, John Marin, George Bellows, Edward Hopper, Fairfield Porter, Roy Lichtenstein, Rockwell Kent, Adolph Gottlieb – and on and on.

If this were a traveling show, we would rave over its scope and content. That this is a show assembled entirely from the museum's collection makes it all the more interesting.

It includes the Homer painting as well as the many paintings that have come to Colby in recent years thanks to the Alex Katz Foundation.

Katz, who has a wing at the museum dedicated to his work, has a long history with Colby. Lately, he has given the museum paintings and other works of art by leading contemporaries, including Chuck Close and Jennifer Bartlett, as well as a trove of paintings by Maine native and modernist master Marsden Hartley.

"Art at Colby" also includes more than 70 pieces that the museum acquired in 2007 as part of a larger $100 million gift of art from Peter and Paula Lunder. This exhibition marks the first time such a large segment of the Lunder gift has been shown collectively.

It also includes recent purchases, such as Agnes Martin's luminous "Untitled #6," a 1994 painting that came to the museum with funds from the Jere Abbott Acquisition Fund.

GAME BEGINS WITH A HOMER IN '49

As art stories so often do in Maine, Colby's story begins with Winslow Homer.

Colby acquired "The Trapper" as a gift in 1949, a full decade before the museum actually opened and almost 80 years after Homer made the painting.

At the time, the college was adamant about enriching its liberal arts curricula on the orders of college President Seele Bixler, who took office in 1942, trading Harvard for Colby.

Right off the bat, Bixler hired fellow Harvard colleague Samuel Green to teach fine...