Ashley Bryan at the PMA

Amazing artist and storytelling – share with your students

Ashley Bryan’s prolific and varied creative career has spanned more than half a century, and this is the first major art museum exhibition in Maine for the award-winning, 95-year-old artist and Little Cranberry Island resident. 

A pioneer of African and African American representation in the children’s book medium, Painter and Poet highlights the breadth of Bryan’s work, from his earliest books of African folktales to his 2016 book Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan, which won a Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Honors in both Author and Illustrator categories.

Coming in October
Beautiful Blackbird: An Adaptation of the Story by Ashley Bryan presented by the Theater Ensemble of Color. This will take place at the PMA and also at USM where you will be able to bring students to the play. Watch for more information on this opportunity.

Coming in November. PMA Films presents I Know a Man…Ashley Bryan. 

Take a trip to Bryan’s Little Cranberry Island and into his home and studio in this article from the most recent edition of the PMA magazine, Inside the Circle. 

Ashley in his home