Opinion: Maine’s towns and cities need the arts more than ever

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 27, 2026

Rockland has quietly become one of the most culturally vital places in New England, not despite its working-class identity, but because of it. Rockland understands something many larger cities have forgotten: making things matters. Whether one builds a boat, paints a canvas, composes music or crafts furniture by hand, the impulse is fundamentally the same. Art is not separate from civic life, but evidence of it. That philosophy has transformed Rockland into what many now call the Art Capital of Maine. The scale of its cultural ecosystem is astonishing for a city this small: two major museums, galleries, a restored Art Deco theater, internationally respected film programming, furniture craftsmanship, wooden boatbuilding, artist residencies, performance spaces and independent creative organizations. Rockland demonstrates that the arts are not peripheral to civic health, but central to it. ~ Donna McNeil