Any reader of this newspaper who would like to see a truly excellent, museum-quality art exhibit needs to take a ride out to Calais before the end of October. Going on now is an exhibit titled “Works of Art from Private Collections,” an exhibit, as the title indicates, of art works temporarily loaned from Down East and Canadian private collections.

My wife and I stopped by on Sunday, and we were astonished that local folks in our area had such works in their collections. From Marc Chagall, George Pearse Ennis, Tomah Joseph, John Leavitt, David Orrell and Charles White, to works from Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, and Russia, from American folk art and abstracts to portraiture and landscapes to pottery and baskets, this exhibit has a tremendous range of styles and periods – and the quality is uniformly high.

This exhibit is being held in Calais at the Riverside Pavilion (formerly the Maine Tourism Association’s Visitor Information Center), next to the Calais Free Library, every afternoon from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. through the end of the month. If you like art, or if you would just like to be astonished that such a fantastic exhibit could be held way Down East, pop out to Calais before the exhibit closes. For more information, call 454-1110.

After you leave the exhibit, walk a block to the Visitor Information Center’s new office in the Downeast Heritage Museum building and find out what else you can do in the area with the rest of your day.

Mike McCabe

Whiting