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Portland, Maine
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Celebrate art in Maine at the Portland Museum of Art, the state's oldest arts institution, founded in 1882.
The Museum's extensive collection of fine and decorative arts dates from the 18th century to the present. Works by Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Rockwell Kent, Marsden Hartley, and Andrew Wyeth showcase the unique artistic heritage of the United States and Maine.
The major European movements, from Impression through Surrealism, are represented by the Joan Whitney Payson, Albert Otten, and Scott M. Black collections, which include works by Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Edvard Munch, and Rene Magritte.
Special exhibitions complement these holdings. The
Museum is housed in an award-winning building, which opened
in 1983, designed by I. M. Pei & Partners. Visit today
for an unparalleled look at the art of three centuries.
18th to 20th century American fine and decorative arts. Joan Payson Whitney Collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings. Special exhibitions.
PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART RECEIVES JENNY HOLZER PAINTING FROM CONTEMPORARY ART COLLECTOR
The Portland Museum of Art has received a painting by internationally known artist Jenny Holzer from contemporary art collector Kevin Longe and his family, daughter Kathleen Marie Longe and son Kelly Patrick Longe. The painting, entitled Left Hand, is currently on view in the Museum’s third floor galleries.
“This is a significant gift and the first major painting by Jenny Holzer to come into the Museum’s collection,” said Museum Director Mark H. C. Bessire. “We are thrilled with Kevin’s desire to bring great art to the Museum and to help us build a significant contemporary collection.”
Left Hand features an enormous handprint below an enigmatic hand-written inscription that gives the name of an Iraqi detainee who died in Abu Ghraib prison. Like other works in her Protect Protect series, Left Hand is taken from previously classified documents made public by the United States Government. When Holzer exhibited works from this series at the 2007 Biennale in Venice, she observed that, “People find them sad. The prints from the detainees are post-mortem, and it is ghastly to take a dead man’s hands and yank them down to make prints. That’s why those handprints are distorted.” While the subject matter is difficult, Holzer’s paintings have elements that are in the spirit of Pop and contemporary artists, such as Andy Warhol and Gerhard Richter, whose work raised difficult subjects to high art.
Holzer’s identity as an artist has been closely linked to her use of language, specifically aphorisms, that she carves in granite benches, displays as large LED signs, and projects in public spaces. In December 2010, in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Nelson Social Justice Fund lecture series at the Portland Museum of Art, the Museum commissioned a projection by Holzer for the Museum’s façade. This site-specific work, For Portland , featured selections from the poetry of Nobel Prize-winner Wisława Szymborska. The projection was on view for one night only and was a crowd-stopper for downtown Portland. The Museum also owns a small set of Holzer sayings printed on wooden postcards, one of which reads: “Protect me from what I want.”
In presenting the gift to the Museum, Kevin said he chose the Portland Museum of Art for “its desire to build a contemporary collection for which this piece could serve as a cornerstone for attracting other internationally recognized art, the interest and enthusiasm of the museum staff and the Portland, Maine community in the arts, as well as the Museum’s emphasis on social justice through the Nelson Social Justice Fund. I wanted the painting, which was first exhibited at the 52nd Annual Venice Biennale, to go to a museum where it could have the greatest impact.”
K evin Longe is a avid supporter of the Portland Museum of Art and president of ThermoSafe Brands. In January 2010, along with the Jenny Holzer painting, Longe loaned the Museum three major works of contemporary art by Richard Serra and Ellsworth Kelly. The three works are all black and white and large in scale, with each featuring a distinctive surface that engages the visitor in different ways—politically, thematically, and aesthetically.
(Image credit: Jenny Holzer (United States, born 1950), Left Hand , 2007, oil on linen. Portland Museum of Art.)
FIRST MUSEUM RETROSPECTIVE FOR LOIS
DODD ON VIEW THIS WINTER AT THE PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART
Lois Dodd is best known for her works
in which she paints the world around her—from her apartment
windows in New York City to the woods and gardens of Maine and
New Jersey. The exhibition Lois Dodd: Catching the Light
is the first career retrospective for the painter and features
more than 50 paintings from six decades. The exhibition will be
on view January 17 through April 7, 2013, at the Portland Museum
of Art.
Born in 1927 in Montclair, New Jersey, Dodd first moved to New
York as a student at the Cooper Union. She studied there from
1945 to 1948, a time when New York emerged as the postwar art
capital of the world and Abstract Expressionism flourished. In
1952, she was the only female co-founder of the Tanager Gallery,
along with artists Philip Pearlstein and Charles Cajori, among
others. Rather than turn to abstraction, minimalism, or Pop,
Dodd has remained faithful to painting her immediate
surroundings throughout her career, whether it be a country
landscape or an interior view of her apartment.
Dodd was a key member of New York’s
postwar art scene and later taught at Brooklyn College for 25
years. She also found a second home in Maine and became
associated with the Lincolnville artists, including Alex Katz
and Neil Welliver, before moving to Midcoast Maine where she has
lived and painted for several decades.
Dodd was part of
the wave of New York modernists to explore the coast of Maine in
the later half of the 20th-century. Like Fairfield Porter,
Rackstraw Downes, Alex Katz, and Neil Welliver, Dodd started
spending her summers in Maine, beginning in 1951. Attracted by
the inexpensive but rambling old farmhouses, endless woods,
stone quarries, and the bright sunshine, Dodd and her fellow
artists sought both companionship and escape from the demands of
city life. At one time, Dodd shared a house with Alex Katz who
refers to Dodd’s work as, “fresh, honest, direct” in the
exhibition catalogue. To this day, Dodd can be found trekking
through the fields and forests in her Maine environs with canvas
and paint supplies in hand.
She often works
en plein air, starting paintings on site in the woods or
other location and finishing them in her studio. In her essay,
exhibition curator Barbara O’Brien writes, “Her paintings are
premised on the truth that she stood in this place, with the
light casting shadows just so, the temperature of the air warm
or cool, the sun warm against her face, protected by the brim of
a straw hat; her fingers able to employ brush to linen against
the wind of a New Jersey winter.” At times, her observations are
so direct that she uses the window to frame her compositions, as
seen in the exhibition’s View of Neighbors House in Winter.
Dodd often
returns to the same location and views to explore at different
times of day and times of year. Lois Dodd: Catching the
Light includes views of a men’s shelter outside her Lower
East Side apartment that become studies of light, architecture,
and the city. In Men’s Shelter, April, 1968, one sees
the verdant grass of spring with shadows cast by the surrounding
architecture of the neighboring buildings, depicted through her
flat blocks of color. Artist Will Barnet described Dodd’s work
by noting that, “she has this broad imagery and also this
ability to do different subjects and give them what was
important in that particular moment. She has an extraordinary
body of feeling about the possibility of imagery that can be so
different from each other, yet each a work of art, which is not
easy to do.”
Dodd is a member
of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National
Academy of Design, and a member of the board of governors for
the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Among many
honors, she recently was awarded the Benjamin West Clinedinist
Memorial Medal in 2007 from the Artists’ Fellowship, Inc. and
Cooper Union’s Augustus Saint-Gaudens Award for professional
achievement in art in 2005. Her works can be found in museums
including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Kemper
Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, and Portland
Museum of Art, Maine, among others. Dodd currently resides in
both New York and Maine.
The exhibition
is curated by Barbara O’Brien, director and chief curator at the
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Jessica May, Curator of
Contemporary and Modern Art, will install the exhibition at the
Portland Museum of Art. A scholarly catalogue
accompanies the exhibition Lois Dodd: Catching the Light
includes essays by Alison Ferris, Barbara O’Brien, and John Yau,
and 51 color plates and 26 illustrations. In the essays, Ferris,
curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan,
Wisconsin, focuses on Maine and its influences on the artist’s
work. O’Brien discusses the artist’s environment and subjects.
Yau, poet, art critic, curator, and professor at the Mason Gross
School of the Arts at Rutgers University, examines her work in
New York. The catalogue also includes personal reflections on
the artist by Will Barnet, Frances Barth, Charles Cajori, Wolf
Kahn, Alex Katz, Leslie Land, Mel Leipzig, Carl Little, Norma
Marin, Elizabeth O’Reilly, and Philip Pearlstein. The catalogue
is $40 and available in the PMA Store.
This exhibition
was organized by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas
City, Missouri. Media sponsorship is provided by WCSH 6.
(Image Credit: Lois Dodd, Men's Shelter,
April, 1968, oil on linen, 47 1/2 x 39 1/4 inches; Kemper
Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Bebe and Crosby
Kemper Collection, Museum Purchase made possible by a gift from
the Kemper Foundations.)
RELATED PROGRAM
Lois Dodd in Conversation with
Karen Wilkin
Wednesday, January 16, 2013, 5 p.m.
to 6 p.m. Holiday Inn By the Bay, Tickets: $10/Free for
members. Purchase tickets at portlandmuseum.org
This program features artist Lois Dodd
in conversation with art critic Karen Wilkin. Lois Dodd was a
key member of New York’s postwar art scene and part of the wave
of New York modernists to explore the coast of Maine in the
latter half of the 20th century. Dodd will be in conversation
with Karen Wilkin, a regular contributor to The New
Criterion, Art in America, and the Wall Street
Journal and Contributing Editor for Art for the Hudson
Review. The two will discuss the evolution of the art
scene in New York and Maine, and the ways the two locations
continue to inspire the artist. Afterward, Museum members are
invited to join the opening celebration to the retrospective
exhibition Lois Dodd: Catching the Light.
This
program is made possible in part by the Beatrice Gilmore Fund
for Museum Education.
VOICES OF DESIGN: 25 YEARS OF
ARCHITALX CELEBRATES
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN AT THE PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART
Voices of Design: 25
Years of Architalx will showcase the power of design
through an interactive exhibition featuring work of some of the
world’s leading architects and designers. On view February 2
through May 19, 2013, at the Portland Museum of Art, Voices
of Design will celebrate 25 years of Portland’s Architalx
lecture series.
Voices of Design will include a 17-foot-tall
tower with three levels of images that alternately reveal
themselves and disappear. A dynamic image projection
will light up two sides of the tower by using projectors
embedded in the interior of the tower and will feature infrared
light sensors, creating touch interactivity for visitors. The visitors’ touch will
cause a rippling response of images on a massive scale and
connected to 12 architectural themes: Nature, Place, Expression,
Material, Process, Responsibility, Light, Structure, Space,
Craft, Optimism, and Culture.
On either side of the tower
will be two 10-foot-tall sound portals with thematic audio clips
from the Architalx lecture series. Through the use of
“holosonic” technology for projecting tight beams of sound, the
sound will be heard only by the person or persons in the
portals.
The exhibition will highlight
the cutting-edge work of leading architects and designers from
around the world who have presented as part of the Architalx
lecture series in Portland during the last 25 years, including:
Glenn Murcutt, Rafael Moneo, Tod Williams, Billie Tsien, Peter
Bohlin, Jim Cutler, Michael Van Valkenburgh, Ada Karmi-Melamede,
Samuel Mockbee, Brian MacKay-Lyons, Brigitte Shim, Merrill Elam
and Henry N. Cobb, among others.
The Voices of Design
tower was designed by architects Tim Ventimiglia and Jennifer
Whitburn of Ralph Appelbaum Associates, New York, with the
multi-media interactivity created by the international team of
Raphael DiLuzio, artist and Associate
Professor of Design Science/Fine Art at the University
of Southern Maine in Portland, as well
as an Apple Distinguished Educator, and Matthias
Oostrik, an interactive video artist based in Amsterdam, with
contributions by Andrew Bradley, structural engineer with SMRT
in Portland. Voices of Design was curated by Robert
Wolterstorff, Director, Bennington Museum of Art, Vermont and
John Turk, Principal, ttl-architects, LLC.
Architalx is a non-profit
volunteer organization established in 1987 for the purpose of
providing educational programs in the field of architecture and
design to Greater Portland and Maine. The mission of Architalx
is to broaden the awareness and understanding of architecture,
landscape architecture, and design by sponsoring activities
which foster evocative and creative dialogue within the design
community and with the general public. The Architalx board of
directors is composed of design professionals and others
interested in the built environment. For more information, visit
www.architalx.org.
The Voices of Design
exhibition underwriter is Marvin Windows and Doors,
distributed by A. W. Hastings and Company. CBRE/The Boulos Company is a Visionary Voice of
the exhibition.
Sponsor Voices are
Wright-Ryan Construction, Duratherm Window Company and Studio
Mnemosyne. Patron Voices include SMRT, Inc., Doug Green, Green
Design Furniture, and Heidi Dikeman, GoGo Design. The media sponsor is Maine Home + Design. Voices of Design is a recipient of
a 2011 Davis Family Foundation grant.
ARTIST MILDRED BURRAGE’S YEARS IN
This spring, the Portland
Museum of Art will present From Portland to Paris: Mildred Burrage’s Years in
France , an
exhibition devoted to the work of Portland-born artist Mildred
Burrage (1890-1983), who as a young aspiring painter traveled to
While
Mildred Burrage was a prolific artist up until her death in 1983,
this exhibition will celebrate the crucial, formative years
(1909-1914) of her life when she traveled abroad and was
introduced and exposed to modern European movements. There,
Burrage trained her eye on the landscape, creating oil paintings
and filling sketchbooks with images in her distinctive
Impressionist style. She wrote copious letters to her family back
in
Many of the
letters in the exhibition, carefully transcribed by Maine State
Historian and co-curator of the exhibition Earle G. Shettleworth,
Jr., are delightfully annotated with drawings and watercolor
sketches . The exhibition will
also include a special display evocative of a turn-of-the-century
artist’s studio and will feature works by other artists who
painted in Giverny represented in the Museum’s permanent
collection and on loan from private collectors.
Mildred
Burrage took her first art classes from
Throughout
her travels in
"The river is a good
deal wider than the
While this
exhibition will focus on the early moments in the artistic career
of Mildred Burrage, she went on to become a force in
This project
is related to the exhibition The Draw of the Normandy Coast
(June 14-September 3, 2012) which will also be on view at the
Museum through the summer of 2012—both exhibitions will celebrate
the lure of northern France for American and European
artists.
The
exhibition is curated by Margaret E. Burgess, The Susan Donnell
and Harry W. Konkel Associate Curator of European Art at the
Portland Museum of Art, and Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr., Maine
State Historian. A full-color catalogue will be published with
this exhibition.
This
exhibition is supported by Sally Wallace Rand, William G.
Waters, and by Wilmont and Arlene Schwind in honor of Sally
Wallace Rand. Corporate sponsorship is provided by The Bear
Bookshop, Marlboro, VT.
(Image Credit: Mildred Burrage, Souper
a Deux , 1909–1912, oil on canvas, 34 5/16 x 30 1/2
inches, Portland Museum of Art, Maine, Gift of the artist.)
Edgar Degas: The Private Impressionist
will be
the first comprehensive exhibition in the history of the
Portland Museum of Art devoted to the 19th century French
master Degas and his works on paper. Comprised of more than 70
drawings, prints, pastels, and photographs as well as several
sculptures, the exhibition will provide an insightful
exploration of the oeuvre of one of the most skilled and
complex artists in art history. In addition to masterworks by
Degas, the exhibition will include a select group of 17 rare
works on paper by artists of his circle, including captivating
works by Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Jean-Auguste
Dominique Ingres, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Paintings and
drawings by Jane Sutherland, a contemporary New England artist
greatly inspired by Degas, will add yet another dimension to
the display.
*The Call
of the Normandy Coast (1820–1920) (first floor)
June 7
through September 3, 2012
The northern coast of France—and Normandy in
particular—proved to be an artistic crucible for French and
American painters during the course of the 19th and 20th
centuries. Geographically convenient to Paris, accessible by
train, with dramatic cliffs and rock formations, and picturesque
and active ports, Normandy was an attractive haven. Realists,
Impressionists, Neo-Impressionists, Fauves, Cubists, and
Surrealists all gravitated to the area. Spanning roughly 100
years (1820–1920), this exhibition will chart the coast’s
significance and showcase the ways in which the landscape was
rendered by a spectrum of artists. This exhibition will explore
the importance of the towns and villages of Honfleur and Le
Havre, and such unique destinations as Étretat and will
feature more than 40 works of European and American art, mostly
paintings and works on paper, from the Portland Museum of Art
and from the private collection of Scott M. Black.
CELEBRITY PORTRAITS ON VIEW THIS WINTER AT THE
The exhibition will reveal the sometimes surprising ways in which
appearance, poses, and props help to define the public perception
of an artist’s work—both on the stage and in the museum. Other
photographers whose works will be on view include Philippe
Halsman, with his ground-breaking images of notable early
television comics, such as Lucille Ball, Jimmy Durante, and
Imogene Coca, whose wildly expressive faces helped forge their
careers. Barbara Morgan’s photographs of the noted choreographer
Martha Graham further capture the essence of modern dance in
similarly exaggerated movements. The exhibition also includes a
close look at some of
This summer the Portland Museum of Art presents The Portland Society of Art: Winslow Homer’s Legacy in Maine, on view July 28 through January 13, 2013. This exhibition examines, for the first time, the artistic relationship between the painter Winslow Homer, his close friend the architect John Calvin Stevens, and the early years of the Portland Society of Art, the precursor to the Portland Museum of Art. With architectural drawings and a range of paintings and watercolors by Winslow Homer and his Maine contemporaries, this installation of 50 works provides a deeper understanding of Portland’s art world at the turn of the last century.
The exhibition includes southern Maine scenes by artists Charles Kimball, Vivian Akers, and George Morse, Casco Bay seascapes by Harrison Bird Brown, and watercolors by Mary King Longfellow. These paintings will be installed next to contemporary pictorialist photographs by William B. Post, Frank Laing, and other members of the Portland Camera Club. Together, they place Winslow Homer’s art in a regional context and they demonstrate how important his legacy was for the burgeoning community of artists in Portland during the early decades of the 20th-century.
Founded in 1882, just as the Homer family began to explore Prouts Neck for its potential development as a summer community, the Portland Society of Art sought to define a higher profile for the fine arts in this city. The Society organized small exhibitions of works by local artists, encouraged residents to display art works that they had acquired in their travels abroad, and promoted the new idea that photography was a fine art.
A century ago, just after Homer’s death in 1910, the Portland Society of Art opened its new art galleries designed by the city’s leading architect, John Calvin Stevens. The stylish Renaissance Revival building, known as the Lorenzo de Medici Sweat Galleries, was intended to house the Society’s growing collection of art by contemporary Maine painters. Significantly, during the first three years of its existence, the galleries also featured a small, but significant, collection of works by Winslow Homer. Lent to the Society by Homer’s brother, Arthur, the collection included 16 paintings and watercolors. During those same years, 1911 to 1913, John Calvin Stevens placed his Homer painting, The Artist’s Studio in an Afternoon Fog , on public view for the first time. This romantic scene of the rocks at Prouts Neck, shrouded in fog, silhouettes the Homer family compound which Stevens had designed for them in 1883.
Alongside Homer’s work, the Portland Society of Art’s early exhibitions also featured paintings by an important group of local plein-air painters known as the “Brush ‘uns,” whose Sunday excursions were frequently led by Stevens. Over the subsequent decades the Society acquired a representative group of their landscapes and portraits, in addition to a number of art photographs taken by members of the Portland Camera Club, housed in the Society’s building. These works came to form the core collection of the Portland Museum of Art, when it was fully established in 1911.
(Image credit: Winslow Homer (United States, 1836–1910), Artists Sketching in the White Mountains , 1868, oil on panel, 9 7/16 x 15 13/16 inches. Bequest of Charles Shipman Payson.)
PMA Café is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Friday until 8 p.m. Memorial Day through Columbus Day, open on Mondays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. No admission is required to visit the Museum Café.
Open during regular Museum hours, the PMA Store showcases products by Maine artists and artisans including handcrafted jewelry, cards, home goods, and gifts as well as Maine's largest selection of art books, a children's section, and a variety of items highlighting the Museum's collection and exhibitions. Members receive a 10% discount. No admission is required to visit the PMA Store.The Museum Shop is
The museum is located at Seven Congress Square in Downtown Portland, at the intersection of High, Congress, and Free Streets.
To reach the Museum from I-295 (north or south), take Exit 6A, Forest Avenue South. Bear right at the first light, drive through the park, and proceed on State Street to the top of the hill. Turn left at the light onto Congress Street. The Museum is located on the right after the next light. Public parking lots are located on High Street, Free Street, and Spring Street.
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