Founded in 1959 and now comprising five wings, nearly 8,000 works and more than 38,000 square feet of exhibition space, the Colby College Museum of Art has built a collection that specializes in American and contemporary art with additional, select collections of Chinese antiquities and European paintings and works on paper.

The museum serves as a teaching resource for Colby College and is a major cultural destination for the residents of Maine and visitors to the state.

In the early 1950s, Adeline and Caroline Wing gave paintings by William Merritt Chase, Winslow Homer, and Andrew Wyeth to Colby College.

The next year, the college received the Helen Warren and Willard Howe Cummings collection of American paintings and watercolors.

In 1984, the museum celebrated its 25th anniversary with the exhibition, Portrait of New England Places, which covered a span of nearly 200 years in American art.

In 1991, the museum expanded again, increasing the collection storage facilities and adding the Davis Gallery, designed by the Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott.

[1] In 1999, with a lead gift from Peter and Paula Lunder, a new wing opened for the exhibition of Colby's growing collection of American art.

[2] The Lunder Wing, designed by architect Frederick Fisher, comprises 13 galleries and 9,000 square feet of exhibition space for the Colby Museum's growing collection.

In 2002, on the museum's east lawn, Seven Walls, a concrete structure by conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, was installed with support for its construction provided by the Jere Abbott Acquisitions Fund.