Join us for a conversation between David Foster, a lead organizer of the Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities conservation effort and director emeritus of the Harvard Forest, and Doug Boynton, a longtime resident of Monhegan Island dedicated to its sustainability through stewardship of the Wildlands through the Monhegan Associates, the Monhegan Lobster Conservation Area, and the Monhegan Island Sustainable Community Association. This conversation is part of a series of events presented in conjunction with Art, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island: The Monhegan Wildlands, on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art through June 1, 2025.

David Foster is an ecologist and director emeritus of the Harvard Forest, Harvard University's 4000-acre ecological laboratory. His research focuses on interpreting landscape dynamics from climate change, human use, and other factors and applying these results to conservation. In 2005, David and colleagues developed Wildlands Woodlands Farmlands & Communities – A Vision for the New England Landscape, an ambitious initiative for forest and farmland conservation integrated with community development. He is the author of Hemlock: A Forest Giant on the Edge, A Meeting of Land and Sea: Nature and the Future of Martha's Vineyard, and the foreword to the catalogue accompanying the exhibition. He and his wife Marianne Jorgensen live on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.

Doug Boynton was born in Bethel, Maine, in 1948, and grew up in Saigon. He made Monhegan his home in the United States in 1956. After graduating from Trinity College, he planned to spend time on the mainland but got waylaid by a "temporary" job lobstering, a passion he pursued for fifty years. Boynton was part of a group of new winter residents who, by 1980, had swelled the population to a high of more than one hundred people. Boynton's town jobs have included constable, fire chief, road commissioner, and chair of Monhegan Associates' Land Committee. With his wife, Alice Boynton, he was instrumental in forming the Monhegan Island Sustainable Community Association and in helping pass legislation to protect Monhegan's conservation zone.

Free and open to the public. No registration is required. Presented by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in collaboration with the Monhegan Museum of Art & History.

Pictured: Accra Shepp, Monhegan From Manana, 2023. Archival pigment ink print. Courtesy of the artist.