Earl Smith
The story of Waterville and its surrounds is one of astonishingly rapid growth and prosperity. The city flourished on the wave of the Second Industrial Revolution. Its ever-multiplying mills drew workers from around the world, and its streets were filled with merchants of every kind.
College Historian Earl H. Smith tracks the growth of the museum, focusing more on people than on the art they helped collect. The names are familiar: Lunder, Cummings, Abbott, Katz, Schupf, Strider and Cotter, among others. Smith reveals their roles in the museum's evolution from the early years, when a collection of primitive portraits hung in Foss dining hall, to the present, when the gift of the Lunder Collection made national news. Supporters of the museum have created "a most remarkable masterpiece indeed."