Lately, the pages of Bruce Brown’s monthly planner read like a Gazetteer. Here, there, everywhere dates are circled, with place names penciled in below: Sept. 8, Tides Museum, Eastport. Sept. 19, University of Southern Maine, Portland. Sept. 21, back to home base at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport. Sept. 22, off to the University of Maine at Presque Isle.

And you should see October and November.

Over the next three months, Brown and art lovers from Maine and away will hit the road to take part in the largest collaborative art venture in the state’s history. “Maine Print Project: Celebrating 200 Years of Maine Prints,” opened last week in Ogunquit, and will be on view through March 2007 in 25 museums, galleries and college campuses statewide, each with its own focus.

From lithographs to etchings, woodcuts to serigraphs, these prints chart two centuries of this democratic art form. Some of the artists are key figures in American art history – Winslow Homer, Louise Nevelson and Richard Estes, to name a few. Others who were well-known in their time, such as Linwood Easton, Ralph Frizzell and Dorothy Hay Jensen, may have faded into obscurity, but they deserve another look.

“This entire project stems from a need to know,” Brown said in his office at CMCA, where he has served as curator since 1986. “I’m so excited about having an opportunity to understand better what the history of printmaking in Maine has been, who the artists have been, what their artwork is like, and I think that’s what the excitement of this whole project is.”

The exhibit is a swan song for Brown, who will retire at the end of the year. Statewide, he is known as a tireless advocate for Maine’s contemporary artists, while he has a national reputation as a leading collector of works on paper – whether print or photograph.

“I was thinking about what might I like my final show to be and I realized that for someone for whom prints have meant so much, I hadn’t championed Maine printmaking enough and there have been relatively few exhibits about Maine printmaking,” he said. “Then I realized I was part of the problem and I should make amends before I retire.”

When he mentioned the idea at a gathering of Maine curators two summers ago, they all jumped on board immediately, whipping out their calendars and trying to agree on a date. From there, it snowballed until a total of 25 institutions had signed on. Everyone involved was generous with their time and resources, until the print project became as collaborative as the process of printmaking itself.

Their reasons were twofold. The project is a chance for many of the state’s museums to highlight their print collections, but it’s also a way to honor an esteemed colleague.

“Bruce Brown is so essential, not only as an inspiration, but for his dedication to understanding the medium of prints and his enthusiasm for them,” said Susan Danly, who curated “A Century of Maine Prints: 1880s-1980s” for the Portland Museum of Art’s portion of the print project. “This whole project is a tribute to his dedication to that particular medium.”

It’s a medium that has a rich, but sometimes misunderstood, place in Maine’s art world. Though some prints are unique, many are produced in small batches, called editions. They are considered more accessible – read: less expensive – than fine oil paintings or watercolors, and therefore perceived by some as less precious.

The Maine Print Project challenges that notion.

“This has inspired us to look to see what we have in our closets,” Danly said, “things that are underappreciated.”

At the University of Maine Museum of Art, prints have played a pivotal role from the start. The museum’s founder, Vincent Hartgen, began acquiring works on paper in the 1950s because they were “real art,” widely available and relatively affordable.

Today, UMMA’s permanent collection includes 3,405 prints, many of which are considered benchmarks of the medium. Wally Mason, the museum’s director, tells of a German Expressionist print that Hartgen bought for $60. His colleagues thought he was nuts, but one of the other prints in that edition just sold at auction for nearly $25,000.

“It’s just interesting how things happen,” Mason said. “This is by far the strength of our collection, but we couldn’t even begin to touch some of these now.”

Its portion of the print project, which opens in October, will highlight works by Richard Estes and John Marin, while the lobby and permanent collection galleries will be filled with gems from the museum’s holdings.

“It’s just a print fest,” Mason said.

The party continues throughout the state, from York to Presque Isle – and east to The Tides Institute in Eastport. In the 1920s, the city was a hotbed of activity that centered on the New York Grand Central School of Art. The summer residency lured esteemed printmakers from the city Down East.

“That time was just really rich up here,” said Kristin McKinlay, the institute’s assistant director of exhibitions and education. “It not only reached students, but artists who happened to be up here and saw what was going on in the school.”

The print project dovetails with The Tides Institute’s effort to create a collaborative printmaking studio, which is scheduled to open next summer. And though it’s not a “print shop” in the Xerox sense, McKinlay has already received calls inquiring about photocopying images – meaning that the medium is still misunderstood.

“It’s such a technical art,” said McKinlay, who studied printmaking at Bowdoin College in Brunswick. “A lot of people have a vague understanding of how press works, but when you start talking about the finer points … their eyes glaze over.”

At the Portland Museum of Art, many printmakers in Danly’s comprehensive exhibit have a background in painting. The way they approach the print process – whether drypoint, woodcut, etching or lithograph – is as unique as their brushstrokes.

“Technique is critical. Printmaking affords artists many paths they can take to form an image,” Danly said. “Whatever path they choose is going to make a distinct difference in how the finished product is going to look.”

Renowned curator David P. Becker of Portland, who has worked for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum, touches on both process and product in “The Imprint of Place: Maine Printmaking 1800-2005.” Published by Down East Books in conjunction with the print project, the book is the first historical survey of the subject. Becker also curated the upcoming print project show at the Maine Historical Society.

“He’s a scholar. I’m not, I’m just an appreciator,” Brown said, smiling. “I think he was fascinated by this for the very same reason I was – he knew there was much to learn and that was interesting to him.”

The book, like the exhibit, is a smorgasbord of imagery and ideas – a perfect way to dig in to printmaking for novices and experts alike.

“It’s going to be a combination of educating ourselves and complete visual delight,” Brown said before he hit the road on his tour of Maine. “It’s just been a dream project.”

Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 and kandresen@bangordailynews.net.