Join Museum Educator, David Smith, for a tour through the decades of PMA architecture. Learn about the history of the PMA’s building and grounds from the early 1800s to the present as we move through the different spaces.
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...