If you’ve driven or walked along Main Street in Kennebunk, then you’ve probably gone right by the Brick Store Museum and never given it a second look. Located on the corner of Main and Dane Streets, the Museum is a cluster of three attached row houses in downtown, across from the Kennebunk Free Library and around the corner from Town Hall.
Do yourself a favor. Make it a point to stop in.
The Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk
We’ve lived about a half mile away from the Brick Store Museum since 2020 and I just visited for the first time. My friend Pat invited me to a free talk about the shipbuilding legacy Kennebunk once enjoyed. After the talk, we spent about a half hour wandering through the museum’s various galleries.
I expected rooms filled with boring historical stuff. What I discovered was a treasure trove of folk art, vintage advertising and interesting tapestries, among other historical tidbits of the area.
Towards the back of the museum is a space just for children. It is called the Learning Gallery and offers hands-on activities, books to read and more. There is an active children’s program here and my guess is this is the space where those activities occur.
Head outside behind the museum and you’ll find a second building called the Program Center. This is where the shipbuilding talk occurred. There is a small auditorium and additional exhibition space.
Back outside is the Brick Store Museum Victory Gardens. It is designed to look like authentic Victory Gardens that became popular in the 1940s. Today, it encourages hands-on learning about food conservation and gardening while producing much-needed fresh vegetables for a local food pantry.
About the Brick Store Museum
The Brick Store Museum is an active, community museum focusing on local history, art and cultures of the Kennebunks and its surrounding communities.
The Museum’s Collections hold over 70,000 artifacts relating to regional history. This Museum is open year-round to offer rotating exhibitions, monthly educational programs and tours, historic preservation and archaeology projects, and community events.
Have you noticed oval, black historical signs on some houses around town? Those are from the Brick Store Museum. In fact, anyone living in a home built before 1970 can make an appointment with the museum to learn the history of their home. We’re told our house was built in 1929 so I plan to find out as much as I can about it, thanks to this service.
Free Museum Admission
The Brick Store Museum participates in the Blue Star Museum program. This program offers free entry to the nation’s active-duty military personnel and their families, including National Guard and Reserve. The museum also participates in the North American Reciprocal Museum Association, which allows museum member at the Patron level to get free admission to about 1,300 other museums. If you are a museum lover, a handful of memberships with reciprocal agreements can be a great way to save money on museums.
Also, museum admission is free every Tuesday. This is for every visitor and is available June through December.
Admission is also free on Friday Art Nights. These are held on select Fridays from June through September. This year they’ve coincided with the Friday Art Walks in Kennebunk. At that time, the museum is open for free from 5:00pm to 7:00pm for visitors to explore exhibitions after-hours and enjoy an art activity (for all ages!). Sometimes there are free refreshments, too.
Here’s a list of events at the Brick Store Museum in the next week or so.
Free and Cheap Things To Do in Southern Maine
Here are FREE and cheap things to do in Southern Maine in the coming week.