To ride out the pandemic, the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland is staying local.

The museum has assembled a series of Maine-themed exhibitions culled from its permanent collection. The shows were conceived as part of the state’s bicentennial, and they have special resonance during the pandemic given Maine’s relative safe haven from the disease, compared to other states.

Experiencing them feels a little like crossing the Piscataqua River Bridge on I-95: It’s good to be home.

Organized under the banner “First to Hail the Rising Sun: Maine Through the Eyes of its Artists,” these exhibitions examine the state from broad perspectives and narrow, focused visions of individual artists. Broadly, “Maine: The Farnsworth Collection” takes many of the highlights of the collection and presents them en masse, with the museum doubling the gallery space that it usually gives to art from its collection. One of the realities of contemporary exhibition practice is that visitors usually get to see a fraction of a museum’s collection. This exhibition alters that equation, at least for the rest of this year.

Among the highlights are Fitz Henry Lane’s “Camden Mountains from the South Entrance to the Harbor,” an oil painting from 1859 that presents a warm and romanticized view of the calm harbor with Mount Battie, Mount Megunticook and Bald Mountain glowing in the distance. On the other end of the temperature spectrum is Rockwell Kent’s “Maine Coast,” a blue-and-white oil painting that Kent made during his time on the island in the winter of 1906-07. He shows snow-covered island fields and a snow-capped peak rising in the background, all under threatening gray skies.

Also on view is a Robert Indiana aluminum “LOVE” sculpture and Neil Welliver’s graceful painting “Silas in Green Canoe,” which expresses love in another way. Welliver made the painting out of a feeling of loss and wanting to remember his son, whose green canoe sits empty in the Allagash wilderness.

Since it became a museum 70 years ago, the Farnsworth has focused its collecting habits on works of art by artists who have or worked in Maine, matching its mission of celebrating Maine’s role in American art. It has about 1,000 paintings in its collection, along with thousands of works on paper and hundreds of sculpture. The museum specializes in three generations of Wyeths and is focusing on Andrew with the exhibition “A Maine Legacy,” covering his 70 years in Maine, most of them spent sketching, drawing and painting in the communities of Cushing, Port Clyde and nearby islands.

At first glance, the startling egg tempera “Adrift,” from 1982, might appear to depict a deceased fisherman adrift in his dory, awaiting a natural burial at sea. In fact, the fisherman is alive, and just resting.

Alive or dead, the subject of the painting is at peace – despite the ledge of rocks lurking just beyond the bow.

“First to Hail the Rising Sun: Maine Through the Eyes of its Artists,” on view through Jan. 3, Farnsworth Art Museum, 16 Museum St., Rockland.

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