The baskets of Jeremy Frey from the Passamaquoddy tribe in Maine have caught the attention of the art world.

Portland Museum of Art’s ‘+ collection’ expands narrative about curation and exhibition process.

[Fragments of Epic Memory is] a celebration of kaleidoscopic talent and – with its companion display of 19th-century photography – extraordinary resilience.

“This is a big shift,” said Shalini Le Gall, the museum’s chief curator. “I’m an art historian, but art history is not the only way to access art in a museum. We want to show people that art by its nature is not stable, and the scope of interpretation will always be changing.”

Tours begin at the Portland Museum of Art, where patrons can look at some of Homer’s paintings. Then a shuttle bus whisks visitors to Prout’s Neck to take in the studio and the yard that slopes down to the ocean. It is a step back in time to a place that feels surprisingly relatable.

When the French-born, Harlem-based artist Elizabeth Colomba starts an oil painting, she does so like the masters.

The show reveals the untold stories of stewards and students, the shadowed innovation, and the profound impact a small school in Rockport, Maine has had on photography. 

A Portland Museum of Art exhibit takes a snapshot of a half-century of boundary-blurring photo workshops in Rockport.

The Portland Museum of Art has expanded a program that showcases its collection to people enjoying the outdoors.

Taken together, “Drawn to the Light” and “People Watching” provide an insightful selection of fine art photographs and make the point that Maine holds a significant place in contemporary photography.

The PMA has placed more than two dozen replicas of its collection outdoors. Most of the original pieces can be seen inside the walls of the museum, and this project is a way for Mainers and tourists to enjoy some of the art the museum has to offer as they walk, run, jog, and enjoy the great outdoors.

By bringing out the big guns, the show seeks to attract a wide audience, of course, but also show the outsized, cross-pollinating impact the little Maine school has had on the photographic world over the years. 

The show includes almost 100 photographs from nearly 80 photographers, as well as a selection of Workshops-related publications.

It’s a show where labels really matter because they give new, contemporary context with which to consider the works on view. They really push us to think in new ways about who gets to write the history of art in America, who was left out of it and how that is – thankfully – changing.

The time is now to incentivize mass timber as a go-to building material to maximize long-lasting and positive outcomes for our economies and environment.

The PMA’s Assistant Curator of American Art, Ramey Mize, spoke with News Center Maine about Passages in American Art.

“Art takes so many different forms,” said Mize. “It’s not just a painting on a wall. That’s a big takeaway of this project.”

An advisory committee shaped the project around three major themes – Maine’s role in transatlantic slavery, environmental change and the ongoing presence of Wabanaki and other Indigenous nations throughout North America. The resulting exhibit includes items that visitors will see for the first time and familiar works that will be framed in new ways.

LEVER Architecture, noted for its pioneering embrace of mass-timber construction, is making its mark on the other Portland—the similarly forest-flanked one in Maine—with a $100 million revamp of that city’s most venerable public art institution.

“Outside the Frame” makes plain how photography initiated as pure documentation can transmute into political commentary and critique when viewed through the lens of our contemporary consciousness.

Visitors get a newly minted field guide with information about Homer, his works, a chronology of his life, a family tree, notes on the area’s geology and local flora and fauna, and so on.

With this complete reinstallation of its permanent collection, the Portland Museum of Art enters the expanding fray of American art museums interrogating their own historical collecting practices with a critical eye.