Purchase tickets for The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism here.

*Additional $5 surcharge.
*PMA members receive free admission.

This spectacular exhibition of modern art showcases 61 works from the renowned William S. Paley Collection at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Paley was a formative and innovative leader in the radio and television world as President and Chairman of the Board at CBS for decades. With Paley at its helm, CBS grew exponentially and nurtured the talents of broadcasting greats including Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. With his penchant for new technologies in business, Paley was drawn to modern art as a collector. Paley, inspired by trips abroad to Europe, began to collect art in the 1930s. He filled his homes with works by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, and Paul Gauguin, among others. Highlights of the exhibition will include Picasso’s superlative Boy Leading a Horse, 1905–1906, André Derain’s Bridge over the Riou, 1906, and Gauguin’s The Seed of the Areoi, 1892. The Portland Museum of Art is the only New England venue for the collection’s 2012–2014 North American tour.

The exhibition is organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Portland Museum of Art presentation is generously supported by George & Eileen Gillespie and Isabelle & Scott Black. Corporate sponsorship is provided by Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and U.S. Trust. Media support is provided by Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, Maine Public Broadcasting Network, and WGME 13. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Paul Gauguin (France, 1848–1903), The Seed of Areoi, 1892, oil on burlap, 36 1/4 x 28 3/8 inches. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The William S. Paley Collection. © The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The William S. Paley Collection

As part of the innovative Circa series featuring the work of Maine’s contemporary artists, the Portland Museum of Art is presenting an exhibition of work by David Brooks Stess, who has spent more than two decades photographing the annual blueberry harvest in northern Maine. Raking along side of Native American Mainers and migrant field hands from south of our borders, Stess has captured the physical aspects of their labor, as well as their social life in workers’ camps on the edge of the fields. By focusing his camera on the hard realities of manual labor and the relationships among the workers, Stess brings an unsentimental view to his subject. An icon of rural life in Maine and one of the culinary wonders of this state, over the years the blueberry has  engendered numerous children’s books and treasured recipes. But blueberry raking has also become a large, agri-business with an economic bottom line and more mechanized ways of harvesting that endanger the traditional method of hand-raking that is quickly and quietly disappearing. This exhibition examines both sides of this dilemma in an attempt to give a face and a context to the wild berry that has come to define the state of Maine.

Circa is a series of exhibitions featuring the work of living artists from Maine and beyond. Circa is generously supported by S. Donald Sussman. Corporate sponsorship is provided by The VIA Agency.

David Brooks Stess, “Javier and Family,” c. 2002, gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches. Courtesy and copyright of the artist.

Voices of Design celebrates 25 years of Portland’s Architalx lecture series with an interactive exhibition that showcases the power of design. The exhibition includes a 17-foot-tall tower featuring multiple levels of screens with images that alternately reveal themselves and disappear. A dynamic image projection lights up two sides of the tower by using projectors embedded in the interior of the tower and infrared light sensors. The visitors’ touch creates a rippling response of images on a massive scale and connected to the themes: What is Architecture?, Authenticity, Culture, Expressive Form, Light, Material & Craftsmanship, Extraordinary in the Ordinary, Optimism, Process, Responsibility, Site, Space, and Structure. In addition, on either side of the tower are 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 is heard only by the person or persons in the portals. Voices of Design was designed by Tim Ventimiglia and Jennifer Whitburn of Ralph Appelbaum Associates, New York; the tower was built by Chris Wright and Martin Simpson; and the interactive digital program was designed and programmed by Raphael DiLuzio, Mattias Oostrik, and Stephen Houser.

This exhibition was organized by Architalx for the Portland Museum of Art.

Image Credit: Sandy Agrafiotis Photography