A golden anniversary is a time to look back at times gone by and imagine things to come. Often, there’s a big party, where friends and family gather to toast the happy couple and share memories. Photo albums and slide shows tell a story in pictures of the couple’s life together.

To celebrate its 50th year, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art chose to do just that: tell a story in pictures, paintings, fabric and sculpture. The show looks back to established artists who have shown at the Rockport institution, and forward to the emerging artists who are shaping the future of Maine art. The exhibit, “Past, Present, Future,” is on view through Saturday, Oct. 5.

“We asked 55 artists who have shown here in the past – in all disciplines – to select someone to show with them, preferably someone who’s young and emerging,” said CMCA curator Bruce Brown. “They didn’t have to stay within their own discipline.”

The artists were the curators, and the resulting collection of work was a “great surprise” for Brown.

“Basically, it was an opportunity for them to collaborate to deepen their understanding of one another through their works,” Brown said.

The guest list was impressive, including such well-known artists as photographer William Wegman, “Love” man Robert Indiana, and super-realist Richard Estes. But the artists they chose, whose names may not be as familiar, offered work that was equally compelling.

The artists either worked together or took cues from each other’s work, and the influences manifest themselves in unexpected ways.

Glass and steel meet rocks and waves in the pairing of Estes’ “Bus Interior” and Ernest McMullen’s “Passing Storm at Wonderland.” Estes’ cityscape is sharp and industrial, while McMullen’s seascape is tranquil and atmospheric, but the two Mount Desert Island painters share a mastery of realism and a deep understanding of color and composition.

Photographer Maggie Foskett and mixed-media artist Sarah Crisp work like lab scientists, capturing slivers of life under glass. Foskett works

in cliche verre, sandwiching a thin, fossil-embedded slice of onyx between layers of glass and enlarging them in the darkroom (like a microscope slide). Crisp incorporated fish vertebrae from Foskett’s studio into an untitled work. Her encaustic painting frames a glass-topped recess in the canvas, where the bones are on view.

With 110 artists on display, “Past, Present, Future” is best viewed over the course of an hour or two. It can be a bit overwhelming, but the work is engaging enough to hold your attention, and the message the show sends is worth the time.

Assembled in one venue, the key players who have established themselves locally and on the national scene aren’t as homogenous as we may think. “Maine art” doesn’t necessarily equal lighthouses, lobster boats and barns with peeling paint. It’s not all Wyeth or Marin or Homer.

Those artists already have their names in the indexes of art history books. But so does Estes, whose sterile, intricate skyline scenes and subway trains remind us that there’s more to Maine art than what we see out our windows every day. And there’s more than one way to interpret what we do see.

Take William Wegman, for instance. For many people, a rock is just a rock. Stick a contorted Weimeraner on top and you have something else altogether. What of Eric Hopkins, who gives himself the tough assignment of painting the Maine islands in a way no one has done before? He gives them a personality – his – by sifting them out, breaking them down, painting them bright and giving them a sense of humor.

This is the present. But what about the future?

It can be seen not in a crystal ball, but in a crystal-encrusted shoe, paired with a fur-bodiced ballgown boasting a ruched satin skirt in a camouflage pattern. The young designer, Masako Kubota, created the dress as a commentary on Karl Marx’s belief that mass production conceals – or camouflages – actual labor, or the lack thereof.

The future also lies in the face of Jesse Gillespie, a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts whom Alan Magee took under his wing several years ago. His self-portrait plays with shadow and texture in a way that mimics his mentor in talent, if not style. The subtlety and nuance in his palette belies his age.

Sean Ryan’s work was chosen by Robert Indiana for its innovative “break from the past.” In “Here or There,” a bottle holds a small television, showing a streaming DVD of Ryan continuously rowing yet getting nowhere.

These emerging artists respect those who have gone before them, but they aren’t afraid to turn their back on tradition. There is a clear sense of excitement in “Past, Present, Future,” and if this show is any indication, the future is in good hands.

The Center for Maine Contemporary Art is located at 162 Russell Ave. in Rockport. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. For information, call 236-2875 or visit www.artsmaine.org.