Take a midday pause with a closer look at highlights from the museum’s collection of art, artists, and themes of France. View works by artists including Camille Pissarro, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Mary Cassatt. Led by Museum Educator Joanne Sterling.
During Maine Seaweed Week, join us in the galleries to learn about the fascinating practices around the use of seaweed in the preservation of artwork. C. Mei-An Tsu, a professional art conservator and currently caring for Harvard University’s famed collection of renowned Blashka Glass Models of Plants. Previously, Mei-An was an objects conservator for 25...
Explore Maine’s maritime heritage as seen through works in the PMA collection. Beginning with the birch bark canoe featured in the PMA’s exhibition Passages in American Art—its construction and cultural significance to the Wabanaki people—Goldstein will expand to consider broader traditions of boat and shipbuilding imagery across the galleries. Seth Goldstein is Director of the...
Brian Smith discusses Gay Bar, a meticulously beaded sculpture that foregrounds surface, repetition, and ornament as sites of meaning. Drawing from his broader practice, Smith considers how labor-intensive processes and material excess intersect with queer aesthetics, transforming notions of preciousness into something both sensorial and conceptual. Brian Smith is a Portland, Maine-based artist working across...
Take a midday pause with a closer look at works with connections to Japan in the PMA’s Collection. This informal gallery talk will explore themes of nature, seasonality, craftsmanship, and storytelling, offering insight into artistic traditions and cultural contexts across time. Led by Museum Educator, Lynda McCann-Olson
Join artist Shane Charles as he discusses his recent installation Into the Sun, as part of the PMA’s long-standing exhibition Passages in American Art. Charles’ installation practice intersects performance, sculpture, and mixed-media work within a cartographic and archaeological framework. Born in Bangor, Maine, and raised along the Penobscot River between Old Town and the Penobscot...
Join Sayantan Mukhopadhyay, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, for a gallery talk in the exhibition Precious: The Value of Ornament. Learn about the genesis of the exhibition, provenance and significance of select works, and how ideas of beauty, material value, and ornament shape the ways museums collect and interpret objects today.
With Historian Seth Goldstein At the turn of the twentieth century, as Maine’s shipbuilding, ice harvesting, and quarrying industries declined, a new identity began to take shape: Vacationland. Inspired by images of Maine’s pastoral beauty, visitors from across the Northeast sought respite along its coasts and in its towns—many calling themselves “rusticators.” Join historian Seth...