Bienvenue à l’Acadie!
Thank you for visiting us!
We are pleased to share that our website is officially one year old and continues to evolve. We appreciate your patience as we continue to build and refine. Please check back often for updates!
NOW OPEN
For our 42nd Season!
Who We Are
Once a Roman Catholic church now a vibrant cultural center and heritage museum, the Musée culturel du Mont-Carmel located in the quaint village of Lille-sur-St-Jean is an institution dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Acadian and Québécois culture and history in the Saint John Valley in the far northern reaches of Maine.
The museum was founded in 1984 following the decommissioning and subsequent ceasing of religious services of Notre-Dame du Mont-Carmel, and is operated by its nonprofit parent organization, L’association culturelle et historique du Mont-Carmel.
Listed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1973, the site has been undergoing extensive restoration and boasts an impressive collection of religious artefacts and vestments, sculptures, folk and decorative art, Acadian and Québécois hard-pine furniture, and works dating as early as the eighteenth century. The Musée also offers public programming that includes educational lectures, exhibitions, guided tours, and is a venue for performance-based events such as dancing, traditional singing, music and concerts, and theatrical productions.
Plan Your Visit
Accessibility Measures
The Musée has a variety of measures in place to enhance accessibility for all audiences.
Visitor Guide and Policies
Learn how the Musée ensures a safe and pleasant visit for all.
The Scenic Byway
More than a working route, the Saint John River / Fish River National Scenic Byway is a truly unique cultural journey.
Explore
Explore the Musée’s rich holdings of religious artefacts and liturgical vestments, delicate linens and laces, hard-pine furniture, sculptures from Québec, Indigenous art and handwoven basketry, and much more spanning across three centuries.
Discover the exhilarating exhibitions currently on display and those coming soon, or revisit those now past! We invite you to dive deeper into our collections and retrospectives to uncover powerful stories and hidden meanings that will change how you see the Saint John Valley and the broader Francophone worlds of northern North America.
Restoration
Explore the
Museum Press Room
Agenda & Announcements
Find out what’s on in our current and upcoming events, programs, workshops and more!
Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for all our latest museum updates!
Support Us!
Contribute to our fundraising campaigns today and help us achieve our missions.
Become a Member
We are a living testament of Northern Maine cultural life and history. Through our collection and programming, the Musée brings to life the human stories and richness of a unique borderland in the most northeasterly corner of the United States.
Help keep the Musée moving forward by joining our community of local and global benefactors and unlock year-round access to the museum with special benefits.
Museum Newsletter
Add a touch of culture to your inbox!
Subscribe to explore articles and special releases featuring the Musée!
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge the land and water that the Musée culturel du Mont-Carmel and the former parish it once served occupy, as well as the ancestral and contemporary peoples indigenous to these places. The grounds of the Musée and its former parish are the ancestral homelands inhabited by the Wolastoqiyik people for thousands of years.
We recognize that we are on indigenous land. In addition to the Wolastoqiyik, the broader place we now call Northeastern Maine is home to the sovereign people of the Wabanaki Confederacy, which include the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki, and Mi’kmaq peoples. We exist on their unceded homelands.
