(soft string music) - Many of the greatest American artists had worked on Monhegan: Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Robert Henri, George Bellows, But they're in all the museums, so it's not like we're taking it all and the Met is not getting any Henri or Bellows or whatever; they're getting them, the Farnsworth is getting them, Portland is getting them.

The thing about us is that we are where they did it.

So, you can look at a painting and then walk out the door and go to the place where Edward Hopper was standing when he did that painting.

(soft string music continues) - Part of what makes Mohegan unique is that so much foresight has gone into preserving the wildlands.

So, Ted Edison, Thomas Edison's son, in the, oh, I don't know, 1930s, realized how much Monhegan would be changed if all of these lots of land that had been created were sold and houses were built on them, that everything that drew people to Monhegan might be ruined.

- So, Theodore Edison began buying great chunks of Monhegan, and then worked with the locals to create an organization called the Monhegan Associates that would own all that land in perpetuity.

It was an amazing thing that he did.

(soft string music continues) - Where else could you go (laughs) where, you know, it's an island, a self-contained unit that has produced such remarkable work?

And here, the island, due to the vision of Ted Edison, is pretty much as it was when it was painted back then.

(soft string music continues) - It was natural that people who were concerned about preserving the island were also concerned about preserving the history of the island.

And over time, there was a bigger push to create a museum to save these stories.

And there had been talk of creating a museum for many years when it became clear that the light keeper's house was going to be sold by the Coast Guard.

And Ted Edison purchased that by sealed bid, and in order to, in time, create a museum.

- At that point, the museum existed entirely of three rooms on the first floor of the keeper's house.

- And about 20 years into the museum's existence, Ed came on the scene, and he became involved in the Monhegan Associates.

And they were discovering that there was a big difference between preserving the history of the island and preserving the wildlands.

And so, the museum had grown too much to be just a committee of the associates, And Ed piped up and said, "Well, why don't you separate?"

And, you know, in a typical Monhegan fashion, they said, "That's a great idea.

Why don't you take care of that?"

- I felt like somebody had taken their hands around my neck and was squeezing it.

(laughs) I wasn't quite up for that.

I had no idea what it really meant anyway, but I had no idea.

(laughs) But I did say, finally, "Okay, I'll do it for a year," be in charge of the museum for a year.

(laughs) That the year turned into 38 years.

(soft string music continues) - When Ed came into this, it was really a history museum; there were less than 20 paintings.

And his fascination with the history of art on Monhegan is what really drove the art collection.

- It would be really amazing if we could begin gathering art done by all of the people that had been here.

Some were not, didn't have the names of Edward Hopper, but they were still very fine artists.

And so, I started doing two things.

One is talking to people in the families of some of the artists who had been here; you know, their children or widows or whatever.

- He was so persuasive in his conversations with people who had art collections that they should contribute works to the museum, that were of historic import, that it was important for all of these different artists to be represented.

And as the collection grew, it became easier for people to see their work here.

But also, his passion for that I think really swayed people.

- (laughs) Phyllis, my wife and I, always, she coined the phrase of what Ed would call it, "Ed Fleecy" on the phone (laughs) when he's here to fleece us for some more money or whatever.

- I became somewhat captivated by his personality.

And when he asked me, I answered, "I wanna help."

That's how it goes.

Even though he's not out there barnstorming, he has that ability to create more and more of a base of friends.

And I think that's helped a lot on Monhegan and the museum down there.

It's just wonderful.

- And there was a tremendous amount of support for this museum.

And it wasn't just the summer residents; it was both summer and winter.

And most of the winter residents would have collections of their own, of ephemera from people they had met, or books of where they would keep scrapbooks of articles and things about Monhegan.

Some of them had paintings that they treasured.

So, it isn't a new thing that people have collected things about Monhegan.

There was a lot of pride of place.

- What a difficult position to have to run a museum, where you have everybody painting, wanting to give things to the museum.

(laughs) And he's kept the standard up unbelievably.

- There are some wonderful videos; Fred Wiley took one of Ed doing one of his early talks in the nineties at the Monhegan School.

And what he would do is he would bring paintings from his own collection and paintings from the museum, and he would bring an easel to the school, and he would hold them up, put them on the easel, and he would talk about them.

- This is a watercolor by James Fitzgerald.

As the weather began getting worse and worse, and a storm started, and the water got rougher and rougher, and Les would row in front, and Fitz would be there doing his sketching.

And finally, Les said, "Fitz, I've had enough.

It's getting too rough."

And Fitz said, "Just keep rowing.

Just keep rowing.

I have more work to do."

So, on he went, and the next time he passed, he said the same thing, "I've had enough.

I'm coming in."

Fitz said, "You can't come in.

I've still got a little bit more to finish."

Whereupon Les responded with, "You row the boat, I'll finish your drawing."

(audience laughing) And I spent time doing research to learn about them myself, and then talked about it as a way of getting many more people on the island aware of and interested in art.

And that sort of started a whole process that leads to having now a permanent collection of over 2000 paintings, some of which are just unbelievably amazing.

(soft piano and strings) - It became imperative to have a place to display this collection and to store it properly.

And so, that was the challenge that Ed was facing in the nineties, as the collection outgrew the keeper's house.

- I was beginning to think, "You know, it would be nice if we did something to create space that was really just focused on art as a portion of the museum."

- This was more of a challenge than you might think, both because of our island location and because we're a historic site.

And so, you couldn't simply build a building, raise the funds; things that you might do on the mainland.

We needed to find a way to make it work In the historic setting.

- When I was researching and reading whatever I could get my hands on (laughs) that was art that had something to do with Mohegan, I turned the page in one of the books that had things about Edward Hopper, and it showed a painting of the lighthouse and light tower and so on.

And (laughs) I looked at it, and I thought, "What the hell is that building there?"

(soft piano and strings continues) Went immediately to figure out what it was.

And it turned out to be the assistant light keeper's house.

(soft piano and strings continues) - His idea was, well, we can't build anything that was never here, but we can recreate these buildings that once stood and make the light station look like it looked at the turn of the 20th century.

- What you see here in the replica of assistant keeper's house is what we built to have galleries to be able to do important exhibition of Monhegan artists, of American artists who worked on Monhegan.

This house had a second floor when it was the home of the assistant keeper's house, but we decided that having it open, as we've done here, would make a lot more sense as a gallery.

(bright lively piano and strings) There had been a small barn on this spot, and we decided that using the same spot and building a building that would be a vault to be climate-controlled appropriately, and to put parts of the collection here for storage.

Here, we have a photograph of fishermen who were dressed up and created a band for the tour centenary of Captain John Smith's arrival.

And down here in the corner is an artist.

The artist is George Bellows.

- There were people who came here and observed, and then there were people who came here and became part of it.

- Art has been an integral part of the life out here, and clearly fishing is important.

But I mean, the art group...

I'm in an odd position in that I don't like to be around a lot of painters (laughs) and so I've often said I wish it were a destination for dentists rather than painters.

(soft piano and strings) - This is a oil painting by George Bellows that was given to us by Jackie Hudson.

She and her sister Julie both were part of forming the museum and organizing the collection, gathering items for the collection.

And Jackie was a big part of the initial art collection.

And so, she was raised in the summer on Monhegan, and her father was an artist, and the artists that were on Monhegan in the early 1900s would congregate on their porch when she was a child.

So, you had people like George Bellows and Robert Henri, maybe even Rockwell Kent.

- It was very much of an art community, and I think Bellows and Hudson, they went on there.

So, it was only right that he would paint their daughters; you know, he's painting everything out there.

- And it's an especially exciting work to have in our collection because it was missing for many years.

It had gone into a private collection in the 1960s, and we knew it existed, and we'd seen a black and white image of it, but no one knew where it had ended up, even though we tried to track it.

And so, when it appeared in 2020 in an auction catalog, we were so delighted to know where it was.

And then, we had generous supporters that purchased it as a gift for the museum.

- Bellows did a portrait not only of Jackie, which you see here, but of her sister Julie.

The painting, the portrait of Julie Hudson by Bellows is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

(soft piano and strings continues) - I know that there was a group (laughs) came to me a couple years ago and they said, "Can you call somebody at the Met to see if we could borrow the portrait of Jackie.

- Of Julie.

Or Julie, I guess it is, right?

- I didn't know.

(laughs) - And, you know, they were gonna have a show that summer, and I said, you know, the Metropolitan moves at a very slow pace.

- Jackie, through the years, she did lots of things to help us out in the museum.

So, when we built the new galleries and had a wonderful party, we had Jackie Hudson, who was in her late eighties at the time, we had her cut the ribbon on the building.

- Susan Bateson and Steve Fuller purchased that for the museum in Ed's Honor.

And last year, we were able to hang that... when you enter that building, there was Jackie right in front of you, inside the door that she cut the ribbon for at the opening ceremony in 1998.

So, I think that was really special to Ed, to be able to bring that painting home and to be able to show it in the gallery that he created.

(footsteps crunching) (serene piano) - So, do you ever think of it as "my" museum?

(footsteps crunching) (serene piano) - Well, I will not say that I've never used the phrase, but I don't think of it that way, but I do think of I really have given a lot of myself to the place, that I love it, and love that I have been able to do what I've been able to do.

(bright hopeful orchestral music) (bright hopeful orchestral music) (bright hopeful orchestral music)