Lent out as director of Maine Maritime Museum
File photo / Tim Greenway
Amy Lent, who served as executive director of the Maine Maritime Museum for 14 years, is out after a compensation dispute with the board..
Amy Lent, who served as executive director of the Maine Maritime Museum for 14 years, is out abruptly, according to the museum and a published report.
The Bath museum late Thursday announced Lent’s “departure,” saying it came after she’d sought a binding deal that would have kept her on till retirement.
“Amy recently approached the board about her intention to retire, but requested a lengthy and legally binding financial commitment that the board determined was not in the best interest of the museum either financially or organizationally,” the statement said.
For her part, Lent told the Times Record that she was informed she’d been fired in a Sept. 10 text from the museum’s board chair, Laura Burns. The firing was effective immediately.
An interim successor has not been named. Senior staff and a task force of key board members are working to continue the operation of the museum as usual, a spokeswoman said.
Lent told the newspaper she’d drafted a plan that would get the museum through the pandemic and allow for her to retire in 18 months. The plan would include filling director seats and finding her replacement. She asked that her own compensation terms be written into a contract.
The board’s announcement Thursday included a short statement from Burns:
“We thank Amy for her drive, energy, and dedication to the museum over the past 14 years, and we wish her the best in her future endeavors.”
Prior to coming to the museum, she'd served as director of marketing and visitor services at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pa., and had an extensive retail background before going into the museum world. She brought with her a retail sensibility, bringing new life to the exhibits and recognizing the need to get visitors in the door.
Since joining the museum in 2006, Lent raised money for projects like the giant steel “Wyoming” sculpture, which offers a depiction of the largest wooden vessel built in North America; the acquisition and restoration of the 1906 schooner Mary E; and, most recently, a 5-acre campus renovation designed to improve accessibility.
The museum, which is on the banks of the Kennebec River not far from Bath Iron Works, gets more than 50,000 visitors a year, including many school groups.
The 5-acre campus includes a main exhibit building and several outbuildings that give a sense of how a working shipyard once operated, with a blacksmith shop, saw mill and hands-on boatbuilding shop. It also offers lighthouse and river cruises. The grounds are on the site of a former boatbuilding operation, Percy & Small.
Bath is known as the City of Ships.
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