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49 Oak

About

49 Oak front windows with vinyl reading "Be our Valentine?" looking into a pop-up shop full of Valentine's Day cards.

Be Our Valentine

Pop-up by the Illustration Department, 2023

Photography by Annabelle Collette

As a flexible, experimental space, 49 Oak presents student work and hosts activities tied to classroom projects, from popup shops to exhibitions. Administered by Artists at Work with faculty support, students learn how to curate, install, promote, document, sell, and staff exhibitions. During summer months, programming focuses on work created by the College’s alumni network.

Current & Upcoming

Merry Magical Market

December 1 - December 7, 2025

Opening reception December 4

The Merry Magical Market is a pop-up shop hosted by the class Selling Out: Making Money Marketing Multiples, taught by Evelyn Wong. The class explores various ways that artists can be creative entrepreneurs, sharing their artistic vision with the world while supporting themselves in the process of making money.

The class has met a number of local artists in the local community, taken field trips to see places where artists sell their work, and read about how some artists manage their business finances. In the classroom, they've explored printmaking processes including silkscreen and letterpress, and have made so many zines and handbound books over the course of the semester that they're excited to share at the pop-up shop. The group has also made room in the shop for student submissions, so expect to see some work from outside of the group as well!

Student pop-up hosts include:

  • Ezekiel Bliss
  • Tommy Burns
  • Alyssa Evangelista
  • Brookelyn Greene
  • Hannah Holt
  • Calvin Sandberg
  • Adriana Uribe-Rodriguez

Hauntology: Days of Future Past

October 30 - November 16, 2025

Opening reception November 7, 5-7pm

Hauntology: Days of Future Past is the exploration of third year BFA students in ceramics, metalsmithing, printmaking, textile and fashion, and woodworking and furniture at Maine College of Art & Design as they question societal recycling of past styles and aesthetics leading to a cultural flatness where the new is just a reconfiguration of the old. It also challenges us to recognize the ghosts of the past to confront stagnation and seek genuine progress and innovation for genuine creativity. The phrase "days of future past" asks us for the creation of a new future not predetermined.

The present is haunted by ghosts of the past and unfulfilled promises of the future. This perception of “lost futures” emerged from the writings of Mark Fisher in their 2006 essay Hauntology Now. Fisher writes “The ghosts are swarming at the moment. Hauntology has caught on. It's a zeitgeist.” Now on the cusp of 2026, emerging artists see the apparitions of aesthetic nostalgia everywhere in the cultural landscape.

Projects at 49 Oak