PORTLAND

Snowlion Repertory to hold ‘Christmas Bride’ auditions

Portland’s newest professional theater company, Snowlion Repertory Company, has announced auditions for the New England premiere of the Charles Dickens holiday musical “The Christmas Bride” by MK Wolfe and Noel Katz.

The play will run Dec. 15-21 at Lucid Stage in Portland. Al D’Andrea will direct, with musical direction by Jim Colby. Margit Ahlin is the producer.

Auditions will be from 5 to 8 p.m. Aug. 21 at the Hutchins School, 24 Mosher St., South Portland. All auditioners must call for an audition appointment by calling 518-9305.

Auditioners should prepare their best 16 bars and bring sheet music. An accompanist will be provided. They should also be prepared to learn music from the score. Sides are available online. For information, visit snowlionrep.org. For questions, e-mail margit@snowlionrep.org.

AUGUSTA

Maine State Museum hours expanded for weekends

Beginning Aug. 21, the Maine State Museum will expand its weekend hours by opening from 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays. The museum also is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Friday.

The Maine State Legislature authorized the new hours as a pilot project to make the museum more accessible to Maine families and other visitors, said museum director Joseph R. Phillips. The pilot project ends Nov. 27.

“We hope to demonstrate that expanded weekend hours will provide better services to more people so that we can receive authorization to continue these new hours next year,” Phillips said in a press release.

To mark the first Sunday of open hours, museum admission will be free on Aug. 21.

The expanded hours will enable more visitors to see the exhibition “Uncommon Threads: Wabanaki Textiles, Clothing, and Costume,” a showing of the textile arts of the native people of Maine, southeastern Quebec and the Maritime Provinces. The exhibition includes pieces from museums and private collections throughout the United States, Canada and Australia, shown together for the first time. The exhibition closes Nov. 6.

For information, call 287-2301 or visit mainestatemuseum.org.

NORWAY

Western Maine Juried  Art Show set, winners named

The Best of the Best of Western Maine Juried Art Show will run through Aug. 31 at the Lajos Matolcsy Art Center, 480 Main St., Norway.

This year’s recipients for two-dimensional work are: First place, Sheridan McLaughlin; second place, Ron Hamilton; third place, Ellen O’Neill; honorable mentions, Howard Miller, Judy Schneider, Shirley Libby Davis and Gail Rein.

Photography: First place: Ed Stevens; second place, Ellen Rawding; third place, Beth Francis; honorable mention, Robin Priest.

Student two-dimensional: First place, Anthony Morra; second place, Jose Garcia; third place, Kelcey Robichaud.

Judges were Joel Babb and Murad Sayen.

KENNEBUNKPORT

‘You Are a Sailor’s Wife’ lecture set for Wednesday

At 7 p.m. Wednesday, historian Joyce Butler will present the lecture “You Are a Sailor’s Wife” at the Pasco Center, 125 North St.

Butler will examine the life of Frances “Fannie” Mitchell, wife of Capt. Eben Mitchell of Kennebunkport and Kennebunk. The lecture is based on letters written by Mitchell to Fannie between 1854 and 1860. The letters reveal a life in a time of economic instability, when their lives were blighted by long separations, leave takings and returns.

Butler explores the loneliness of Fannie’s everyday life, making us understand her uncertain living conditions, the problem of communication because of an unreliable postal service, the fear of facing childbirth – always in the absence of her husband – and above all, Mitchell’s totally unrealistic perception of her – the woman he called his “angel.”

Butler is a Kennebunk resident and historian, archivist, curator and writer. She was the Kennebunkport Historical Society archivist from 1975 to 1979. Until 1995, she was exhibit and manuscript curator at the Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk. More recently, she was curator at the Center for Maine History.
Butler has also served as town historian for Kennebunk, and is currently writing a history of Kennebunkport. She has written many books about Maine and local history.

The program accompanies the Kennebunkport Historical Society’s summer exhibition, “High Seas and a Safe Harbor: Kennebunkport’s Age of Sail.” Exhibition hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday to Friday. Admission is by donation.  For information, call 967-2751.

BAR HARBOR

Art scholar Wilmerding to speak on Wyeth and Hopper

The modern realism of Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth will be the subject of a talk by art historian John Wildmerding at 5 p.m. Aug. 22. The talk will be held at College of the Atlantic’s Gates Community Center.

Wilmerding is the Christopher Binyon Sarofim Professor of American Art, emeritus, at Princeton University and a trustee emeritus of COA. Formerly, he was a visiting curator in the Department of American Art at the Metropolitan Museum, and has also served as senior curator and deputy director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. He is currently chairman of the board of trustees of the National Gallery and a trustee of the Guggenheim Museum, the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.

The talk at COA coincides with two current exhibits, a retrospective of Edward Hopper’s work in Maine at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and an exhibit of the watercolors of Andrew and Jamie Wyeth at the Bates College Museum of Art. For information call 801-5625 or 288-5015 or visit coa.edu.

EASTPORT

Harvard professor, architect to speak at Tides Institute

Kiel Moe, an architect and assistant professor of architectural technology at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, will speak at 7 p.m. Aug. 25 at the Tides Institute and Museum of Art. Additional commentary will be offered by Jon Calame, principal with Minerva Partners.

Among his recent awards, Moe has been named the 2011 American Institute of Architects’ Young Architects Award recipient. This honor recognizes Moe’s teaching, research, writing and building practice centered on the problems of thermal efficiency.

Also in 2011, Moe was awarded the Architectural League of New York’s Prize for Young Architects. These honors follow his 2009-10 Gorham P. Stevens Rome Prize in Architecture at the American Academy in Rome.

Moe’s talk, “A Building and a Book,” will address how his design research oscillates between the production of buildings and books, with the research behind his books directly informing the design and construction of his buildings.

OGUNQUIT

Documentary on painter Beverly Hallam to premiere

York County painter Beverly Hallam is the subject of the latest “Maine Masters” series of documentaries about Maine artists. It premieres at 6 p.m. Aug. 23 at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, 543 Shore Road. A second showing will take place at 5 p.m. Aug. 29 at Blue Hill Public Library.

“Beverly Hallam: Artist as Innovator” highlights the artist’s career, with examples of work in all her chosen mediums, including her current passion, computer graphics. Filmed at her studio in York, this portrait by director Richard Kane and art author Carl Little includes interviews with Vicki Wright, director of collections and exhibitions at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts; gallerist John Whitney Payson; and art patron Mary-Leigh Smart. Kane, Little and Robert Shetterly produced the film, which was sponsored by the Union of Maine Visual Artists.

From a family of inventors, engineers and artists, Hallam began exploring art as a teenager, washing her photos in the bathtub of her home in Lynn, Mass. She studied at the Massachusetts College of Art, Cranbrook Academy and Syracuse University. She moved to Maine in the 1960s.

Her work is in the Fogg Art Museum, Farnsworth Art Museum, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Evansville Museum and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

“Beverly Hallam: Artist as Innovator” will have its broadcast premiere on MPBN at 8:30 p.m. Aug. 25 as part of the MPBN Community Films. The “Maine Masters” series broadcasts at  8:30 p.m. every Thursday.

The premiere at Ogunquit is free and open to the public.