HOULTON, Maine — In light of the global pandemic that has confined millions of people to their homes, museums around the world are offering virtual tours to experience their treasured collections that can be experienced from the safety of their homes. The Louvre in Paris is doing it, and so is the British Museum in London.
And now, the Aroostook County Art and Historical Museum in Houlton is too.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for a really long time, even before the virus,” Henry Gartley, president of the museum, said. “But it certainly seemed like now would be a really good time to do it.”
Parts one and two of the virtual tours have been uploaded onto YouTube, with more parts expected to be uploaded at a later date. They were filmed by Gartley using his smartphone and the iMovie app to cut it together, and features the voice of Leigh Cummings, the curator of the museum, explaining many of the hundreds of items held there.
“It was rather amazing to me. When I was doing interviews of that type 30 years ago, I was using the big old VHS movie cameras and it took some planning to get everything set up. Now it’s just a phone app,” Cummings said.
Founded in 1937 by Ransford Shaw, a prominent attorney in Houlton at the time, with the house donated by Stella King, a Caribou native who wrote a book about the early history of that city, the Aroostook County Art and History museum has many rooms which document life in The County dating to pre-colonial times.
The house also serves as the location for the Houlton Chamber of Commerce.
The museum features a wide variety of historical artifacts and paintings, including a dog-powered butter churning machine and military regalia acknowledging Houlton’s long history of being a military base.
The museum usually opens for the season around Memorial Day weekend, but it is uncertain whether it will be able to do so this year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, or whether it will have to be pushed to a later date.
But even if it does open, Gartley said the virtual tour will still prove useful for training student interns, one of which is hired every summer to help with the museum.
“We’ve got our fingers crossed that it’s all going to work out,” Gartley said. “But who knows at this point?”
