Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum

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Bowdoin’s Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum is dedicated entirely to all things Arctic. It is named after Arctic explorers and Bowdoin College graduates Robert E. Peary (Class of 1877) and Donald B. MacMillan (Class of 1898).

In 1967 Bowdoin opened the Arctic Museum. MacMillan, who worked in the Arctic from 1908 to 1954, added to the museum’s growing collections, donating his expedition equipment, anthropological objects, films, photographs, natural history specimens, archival papers, and library to the college.

In the 1990s and 2000s the museum’s holdings of Alaskan and Canadian contemporary Inuit art grew, and its exhibitions, public programs, and workshops expanded to address both historic and contemporary issues.

Today, as Indigenous Arctic groups explore how to maintain their traditions in the twenty-first century, they and researchers are seeking to better understand this rapidly changing region. Meanwhile, industries throughout the world are looking for opportunities to exploit northern resources and newly opened Arctic shipping routes. Northern nations, recognizing the growing global importance of the Arctic are ramping up their defense systems, while the Arctic Council, an international, intergovernmental forum, reiterates its commitment to maintaining a peaceful Arctic.

Arctic environmental, social, economic, and political cross-currents are shifting rapidly. The region needs creative, resourceful, and intellectually nimble leaders in a broad range of fields to bring their expertise to the table and work in collaborative, multicultural contexts. Bowdoin is committed to training our students to be such individuals using the college’s unique resources: its tradition of mentorships, disciplinary and interdisciplinary research, longstanding relationships with Arctic communities, and the institution’s Arctic collections.

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