2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennial
April 7 through June 5, 2011

The Call for Entries deadline was Monday, June 14, 2010. If you have questions about your submission, please contact Sage Lewis. 

Artists will be notified of jurors' results by October 8, 2010.

Focus and Eligibility
The 2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennial is the seventh in an ongoing series of exhibitions showcasing new work by living artists connected to the state of Maine. All artists who have spent significant time in Maine during the last two years (since January 1, 2008) were invited to submit images in any medium for consideration by the jurors.

Jurors
The jurors for the 2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennial are: Jim Kempner, Owner and Director, Jim Kempner Fine Art, N.Y.; David Row, painter based in New York and Maine; and Joanna Marsh, the James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.


2009 Portland Museum of Art Biennial
April 8 through June 7, 2009

Prize Winners:
The Purchase Prizes were awarded to three artists:

The Purchase Prizes are chosen by select members of the Museum's Collection Committee and will become part of the Museum's permanent collection.

The William E. and Helen E. Thon Jurors' Prize of $4,000 was awarded to installation artist Wade Kavanaugh for Falsework.

The 2009 Portland Museum of Art Biennial features work by 17 contemporary artists associated with the state of Maine. Last September three jurors chose 29 works culled from a record 970 applicants. Of the 17 artists chosen, seven have participated in previous Biennial exhibitions. The 2009 Portland Museum of Art Biennial is the sixth exhibition in a series that highlights work by both emerging and established artists associated with Maine. The works represent a wide range of media, from painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography to sculpture, installation, and video.

Each Biennial is uniquely formed by the jurors’ collective vision and the work presented to them. This year more than ever before, the selected works reflect the jurors’ intent to curate the exhibition as a whole and allow for a more intimate experience of each artist’s work, rather than offer a broad survey of the contemporary art scene here.

While the size of the works is diverse, the 2009 Biennial includes three major installations unprecedented in scale from previous Biennials. On entering the Museum’s Great Hall, visitors encounter a ramshackle structure reminiscent of a hermit’s wooden cabin by Ethan Hayes-Chute. This work has been made from materials scavenged from dumps, woodpiles, recycling centers, landfills, and other overlooked nooks and crannies of southern Maine. Visitors are invited to enter the cabin and voyeuristically examine all of the missing occupant’s belongings. Inside the first gallery, Wade Kavanaugh has transformed the space with a cascade of handmade bricks, formed from thousands of stacked sheetrock rectangles. In Falsework, the bricks create a pathway for the viewer to walk through, making the visitor an active part of this piece. Further into the exhibition, rising to a two-story height, is Sean Foley’s Menace, a conglomeration of paintings that move across canvases, onto wooden shapes, and directly onto the wall. This installation, in the artist’s own words, is “intended to provoke an imaginative frenzy” and toys with the illusion between 2- and 3-dimensional forms. Foley’s installation for the 2003 Biennial was the recipient of that exhibition’s Purchase Prize and was on view at the Museum until recently.

A full-color catalogue highlighting each artist is available in the Museum Store for $14.95.

Stats:
970 applicants
17 artists selected
29 works
7 artists have exhibited in previous Biennials*


2009 Portland Museum of Art Biennial Accepted Artists
*Eric Aho (Saxtons River, VT and Islesford, ME) (2003)
*Mary Aro (Grosse Pointe Park, MI and Sedgwick, ME) (1998, 2001, 2007)
Dozier Bell (Waldoboro, ME)
Melissa A. Calderón (Bronx, NY)
*Tillman Crane (Camden, ME) (2007)
*Sean Foley (Worthington, OH) (2003)
A. Jacob Galle (Bowdoinham, ME)
Ilana Halperin (Glasgow, Scotland and Camden, ME)
*Ethan Hayes-Chute (Berlin, Germany and Freeport, ME) (2007)
*Tanja Alexia Hollander (Auburn, ME) (2001, 2007)
Wade Kavanaugh (Brooklyn, NY and Brunswick, ME)
Steven Perkins (Bath, ME)
Andy Rosen (South Portland, ME)
Julianna Swaney (Portland, OR)
Susan Hayre Thelwell (Santa Fe, NM and Hulls Cove, ME)
Susan Prince Thompson (Wilton, NH)
*Sam van Aken (Syracuse, NY and Portland, ME) (2007) 

Jurors

Elizabeth Burke is co-founder and co-director of Clementine Gallery in New York. Known for launching and developing careers, the Clementine Gallery exhibits emerging and established contemporary artists who work in a variety of media. Burke lectures regularly for undergraduate and graduate programs at New York University, the New School University, the School of Visual Arts, and Parsons School of Art, to name a few.
 
Dan Graham is a video, installation, and performance artist also based in New York. Graham has pioneered the use of film and video in performance and installation works since the 1970s and has published numerous critical essays on subjects from music to urban planning. Recent works address architecture and public space and have been exhibited and collected by institutions worldwide.

Denise Markonish is Curator at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams. Her most recent exhibition, Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape explores the work of contemporary artists who approach landscape through history, culture, and science. Previous to her position at Mass MoCA, Markonish was the Gallery Director/Curator at Artspace in New Haven, Connecticut.

If you would like to be added to the Biennial mailing list, please email Sage Lewis with your mailing address.

The Portland Museum of Art Biennial is made possible by the William E. and Helen E. Thon Endowment Fund.