Anne Witty is the new chief curator at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, replacing Senior Curator Nathan Lipfert, who is retiring this spring. Witty previously served as chief curator at Maine Maritime from 2000-03. After leaving, Witty remained in the Midcoast, working at Bowdoin College’s Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, freelancing as a museum consultant and pursuing her master’s in fine arts at the University of Southern Maine.

The Times Record caught up with Witty to learn about what draws her to the ocean and to see what brought her back to Maine Maritime.

The Times Record: What have you been up to since 2003?

Anne Witty: I come here directly from the Arctic Museum of Bowdoin College. I’ve been working there as assistant curator since 2004. In addition to that, I have served as a guest curator on a number of projects. I worked on a Mystic Seaport project titled “Voyaging in the Wake of the Whalers,” an exhibit that examines the influence of whaling on the American experiment, ideas like what whaling meant to this country, what were the fortunes that went into whaling and who was invested in the whaling industry. I worked on that exhibit part-time for three-and-a-half years. I was also freelancing, mostly in maritime but also as a general museum consultant.

Back in 2004 until about 2007 I ran a small office out of Augusta called the Cultural Resources Information Center, which provided technical advice and support to Maine’s many historical societies and small museums.

While working at the Arctic Museum I also did an MFA in poetry at USM. It was great fun to have the time to do that. And I was an online curator for a spell of time for the World Ocean Observatory, which is based in cyber space but physically based here in Maine. I was their webmaster of online exhibits.

TR: What brought you back to Maine Maritime?

AW: I recognized that this museum is the best place in Maine for me to do the things that I love to do, which is curate maritime collections. Maine has the most fascinating maritime history of any state in the union. Maine is the mother-load of history for shipping, coastal trade, oceanic trade, fisheries. It all happened here and it’s still happening.

TR: What are some things about the museum that interest you?

AW: I have a particular interest in the fisheries, and also in shipbuilding. People are going out to sea and fishing every day. These are ideas that the museum is very active in conveying.

I’m also very interested in the story of maritime communities and the cultures and communities that rose out of maritime enterprise, because life in maritime communities is just not the same as life any other place. Throughout the world maritime communities have a certain commonality, certain skills and interests, ways of doing things, peculiarities.

Another thing that intrigues me about Maine’s maritime stories is how worldly people were. We often talk about how globalization is taking over, but if you go back into 19th and 18th century Maine — and even long before that — the people who settled here were adept at crossing oceans and going to foreign cultures. The ships that left from here went to extremely exotic places such as Cuba. Cuba was practically next door for Maine coastal traders, not much further than Florida, and there were many coasting schooners where families went along for the ride.

There were these stories of women who would meet each other in the streets of a town in Maine, but then they’d meet again in Havana and have their get-togethers and swap their notes, explore. We always think of Cuba as a very remote place because it’s been out of sight for the past 50 or 60 years, but in fact it was a place that Maine seafarers knew really well.

TR: What are some ideas that you would like to bring to the museum?

AW: The museum has a very active exhibit program these days. The prospect of coordinating the physical exhibits and then integrating those stories and exhibits with my colleagues and fashioning ways of reaching out to schoolchildren, family groups and special programs is what I’m looking forward to most. That three-dimensional approach to history that’s not just an exhibit on the wall, but also a lecture and a program and a hands-on activity for kids.

Waves of school kids who come here from different districts have actually learned to explore material history. It’s something that no one but museums can do. We have these three-dimensional materials that teach not just about the historical facts but how history is a continuum of people moving in a three-dimensional and material world.

I love the idea of a museum coming alive in people’s imaginations, where key objects will actually transport them to a different way of thinking about the world. Like thinking about a time when you might have been on a four-masted schooner for months to reach your destination, not getting into an airplane and arriving in a matter of hours. I’ve always found that way of thinking really intriguing.

TR: Throughout your career so far, what has been your greatest accomplishment?

AW: I think it’s yet to come. What I love about working in maritime studies is the interdisciplinary nature of it. This was something that I really loved and appreciated about my work at the Arctic Museum as well, that combination of art and history and science.

What I always think of as a good accomplishment is something that integrates multiple points of view and results in a project that can be appreciated for a long time. I was the chief staff person in charge of building the exhibits in the Percy and Small shipyard when I was here from 2000-03, and that’s an accomplishment that I look at with a great deal of pride, because that’s the last wooden shipyard around. In former years, those buildings were filled with exhibits that had nothing to do with shipbuilding, so by bringing those buildings back to at least housing a portion of the Percy and Small story, is an accomplishment that I am very proud of. I’m quite proud of my MFA, too.