The school provides participants with housing, food, and studio space, and the campus offers a library, media lab, and sculpture shop, among other amenities.

[3] Upon returning from the war in 1946, with the help of Simon, Henry Varnum Poor, already an established presence in American Art, and Charles Cutler, a New England stone sculptor, Cummings turned his family farm into a functional alternative school run by artists for artists.

[4] As the name indicates, Skowhegan was originally focused on the traditional art forms of painting and sculpture, but gradually, the program began accepting artists of all practices, even being the alleged site of the first contemporary Land Art piece in 1968 by Douglas Leichter and Richard Saba.

[5] Similarly, while the school originally offered classes such as life drawing or plein air painting, it eventually forwent traditional forms of instruction save for weekly faculty lectures, and all classes on campus are now self-directed by participants.

Since 1952, Skowhegan has recorded the lectures given on campus by resident and visiting faculty artists.