Visit the historic home of Maine’s last Mast Agent and learn how New England forests

fueled colonial industry, strengthened the British Royal Navy, and sparked rebellion.

We are now closed for the season for regular house tours.

Opening again on June 5, of 2024.

Private or special tours are available on request during our off season (except mid December – March 31) by emailing

Director Holly K. Hurd hkhurd@tatehouse.org

Tate House Museum is pleased to announce our participation in Re-Site 2024 in partnership with SPACE.

This Mellon Foundation-funded program is the second edition of a site-specific temporary public art and Portland history-telling initiative first launched in 2020 as part of Maine’s Bicentennial. Re-Site 2024 offers five new artistic projects in partnership with diverse public organizations and spaces that will help expand community knowledge of local histories and their impacts today as well as generate dialogue about what we carry with us into the future. Re-Site 2024 projects come with site histories, artist statements, bibliographies for further reading, and recorded conversations with the artists and other key participants. FMI about Re-Site 2024, visit space538.org.

Opening Night Reception with Artist Ashley Page 

Friday May 10

5:30-7:30 pm 

Tate House Museum will host an reception with Re-Site 2024 Artist Ashley Page on Friday May 10 from 5:30-7:30 pm. This event is free and open to the public, and will include viewing of Ashley’s art installation titled IMAGINING FREEDOM in the context of the historic 1755 Tate House. Her artwork will be on display through June 30 and can be viewed as part of Tate House Museum’s regular house tours, opening for the season on June 5, Wednesdays – Saturdays, 10 am – 4 pm, through mid-October.

Join us for this unique and provocative viewing and more inclusive telling of Tate House and colonial Portland history.

 Ashley Page (ashleypagestudio.com), interdisciplinary artist and

Studio and Programs Manager at Indigo Arts Alliance, describes her project as follows:

Reconciling Portland, Maine’s history of industrialization and colonization while contending with the global reverberations of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Imagining Freedom, asks the viewer to step into the shoes of an enslaved Black individual, Bet. Her age, appearance, homelands, and quality of life are all unknown, lost to the unraveling nature of time. Only appearing in court records, we know nothing about Bet other than that she was a servant living and working in the Tate House in the 1770s for an indeterminate amount of time. Researching the social, political, and economic landscape of Maine during this period and reviewing archival documents, Page makes an intentional departure from the archive as she asks the guiding question: What did freedom look like for Bet? What did her daydreams look like, sound like, taste like? This historical recovery project grapples with the ways enslaved peoples were excluded from historical records and navigates new ways we tell our stories.

Stay tuned for more information about an upcoming workshop by Ashley Page on Juneteenth (June 19th) that will highlight her artistic process.

Meg Hahn of SPACE (left) and Artist Ashley Page in the kitchen of Tate House

JOIN US FOR

Tate House Museum’s Annual Plant & Herb Sale 

Saturday May 18, 9:00 am to 1:00 pm

It’s that time of year again when fingers are itching to get out into the garden. We invite you to shop for perennials and annuals for your garden in support of Tate House Museum on Saturday May 18, from 9:00 am – 1:00 pm.

This popular plant sale features moderately-priced perennials divided from the Tate House Museum’s eighteenth century reproduction garden. There will also be a variety of annual flowers, vegetable seedlings, native plants, other perennials and hanging baskets to choose from.

This can be the one-stop shop for your garden this year to support a good cause!

We will once again have a “Make Your Own Seed Bomb” activity and a sneak peek viewing of Tate House featuring our new art installation by Ashley Page from 10-12 noon.

Proceeds from the sale support the educational mission of Tate House Museum, the only colonial area historic house open to the public in Greater Portland.

Thank you to our 2023 corporate sponsors