Visiting Bangor

The Arts

The Greater Bangor region offers the liveliest arts scene in Maine. Whether your interests are classical music, great art, live theater, or country and western, you can find it in or near Bangor.

Downtown Bangor is the regional arts and cultural center with the University of Maine’s Museum of Art, the Bangor Museum and Center for History, the Maine Discovery Museum, New England’s second largest Children’s Museum, the Penobscot Theatre, and the Bangor Public Library all within walking distance. Galleries and art studios are located throughout downtown. An annual downtown highlight is a summer sidewalk art festival.

Live performances abound, from classical concerts by the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, the country’s oldest continuing community orchestra, to the Penobscot Theatre Company’s stage performances, to a wide range of traveling performances offered at the University of Maine’s Center for the Arts and the Bangor Auditorium. Bangor’s proximity to the University of Maine and its performing arts programs adds a further dimension to the arts scene, with frequent recitals and student performances. In the Greater Bangor area, Bay Chamber Concerts of Rockport provides Classical, Jazz, and World Music concerts and Kneisel Hall in Blue Hill offers a summer chamber series.

Just a short drive from Bangor, additional opportunities can be found. Maine’s Native American heritage can be explored at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor and the Hudson Museum on the Maine campus in Orono. The Farnsworth Museum in Rockland is the only museum in the country solely focused on the important role of Maine in the history of American Art. Maine’s maritime tradition is featured in nearby Searsport at the Penobscot Marine Museum. And Leonard’s Mills, a reconstructed logging and milling community of the 1790’s, keeps alive Maine’s forest history.   The Cole Land Transportation Museum, located in Bangor, collects, preserves, and displays a cross-section of Maine's land transportation equipment.  The Maine State Museum in Augusta highlights Maine’s natural environment, prehistory, social history, and manufacturing heritage.

Bangor was selected by the National Council for the Traditional Arts as the home of the National Folk Festival for 2002 through 2004. Our waterfront is now home to the American Folk Festival. This three-day festival is a celebration of traditional (and not so traditional) music, dance, and crafts featuring over twenty performers on five stages. The festival is held the weekend before the Labor Day Weekend on the waterfront adjacent to downtown.

Whether you choose Bangor for a day, a week, or a lifetime, you will enjoy a rich historic, cultural, and artistic experience.