 McLellan House, Portland Museum of Art | |
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| Location | Portland, Maine |
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| Coordinates | 43°39′13″N70°15′44″W / 43.65361°N 70.26222°W |
| Type | Art Museum |
| Website | portlandmuseum.org |
The Portland Museum of Art, or PMA, is the largest and oldest public art institution in Maine. Founded as the Portland Society of Art in 1882. It is located in the downtown area known as The Arts District in Portland, Maine.
The PMA used a variety of exhibition spaces until 1908; that year Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat bequeathed her three-story mansion, now known as the McLellan House , and sufficient funds to create a gallery in memory of her late husband, Lorenzo De Medici Sweat, who was a U.S. Representative. Noted New England architect John Calvin Stevens designed the L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries , which opened to the public in 1911.
Over the next 65 years, as the size and scope of the exhibitions expanded, the limitations of the museum's galleries, storage, and support areas became apparent. From 1960 to 1962, Donelson Hoopes served as its director. In 1976, Maine native Charles Shipman Payson promised the museum his collection of 17 paintings by Winslow Homer. Recognizing the museum's physical limitations, he also gave $8 million toward the building of an addition to be designed by Henry Nichols Cobb of I. M. Pei & Partners. Construction began on the Charles Shipman Payson Building in 1981, and within two years the $8.2 million facility was opened to the public.
Payson's gift of the Homer paintings served as a catalyst for the museum's expansion as well as for significant long-term loans and outright gifts to the museum. In direct response to the Payson gift, the 1979 gift of the Hamilton Easter Field Art Foundation Collection added more than 50 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by American modernists to the collection. In 1991, the Joan Whitney Payson Collection (owned by Charles Payson's wife Joan Whitney, a Whitney family heiress and New York City socialite) of 20 impressionist and post-impressionist works of art was given to the museum on permanent loan. In 1996, Elizabeth B. Noyce, art collector and Maine philanthropist, bequeathed 66 works of American art, which is the most extensive and diverse gift of American art ever presented to the museum.
The PMA attracts approximately 140,000 visitors a year, and has around 8,500 members.
The museum's collection includes more than 22,000 artworks, dating from the 18th century to the present. The PMA's collection features works by artists including Winslow Homer, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Louise Nevelson, Andrew Wyeth and John Greenleaf Cloudman. The museum has the largest European collection in Maine. The major European movements from impressionism through surrealism are represented by the Joan Whitney Payson, Albert Otten, and Scott M. Black collections, which include works by Giambattista Pittoni, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, René Magritte, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, and Auguste Rodin. The Elizabeth B. Noyce Collection, a bequest of 66 paintings and sculptures, includes paintings by George Bellows, Alfred Thompson Bricher, Abraham Walkowitz, and Jamie Wyeth, and masterpieces by Childe Hassam, Fitz Henry Lane, and N. C. Wyeth.
The museum's three architecturally significant buildings unite three centuries that showcase the history of American art and culture.
Since its opening in 1983, the Charles Shipman Payson Building has been the public face of the museum. Although the original vision of both the architect and the museum's strategic plan was to integrate all three buildings, the Charles Shipman Payson Building the L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries, and the McLellan House only recently has the museum been positioned to achieve this goal. In January 2000, the museum launched a $13.5 million capital campaign to raise funds for the preservation and educational interpretation of its two historic structures.
The project to integrate the three buildings began in the fall of 2000 and was completed in October 2002. The McLellan House and L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries have an emphasis on 19th-century American art, and the Payson Building houses European and American works from the 20th and 21st centuries. The project to "complete the Museum" returned the McLellan House to its original neoclassical elegance and the L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries to their Beaux-Arts splendor, in the process creating distinctive spaces for the museum's outstanding collection of 19th-century American art. The museum's expanded space allows a more complete presentation of the permanent collection, which in recent years has grown in quality and historical importance. In 2014, Scott Simons Architects was engaged to develop a campus masterplan to help position the museum for growth. [1] [2] [3] The museum is open from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. every day except Monday and Tuesday. [4]
The building at 142 Free Street was built in 1830 as a theatre, then served as a Baptist church for 85 years before being purchased by the Portland Chamber of Commerce in 1926 and being renovated by John Calvin Stevens. It later became the Children's Museum of Maine. [5] In 2009, the Congress Street Historic District was created and the building at 142 Free Street was classified as a “contributing structure.” [6] The Portland Museum of Art bought the building in 2019. [7]
In 2022, the museum presented plans for a 5,600 m2 (60,000 sq ft) expansion that would demolish the historic former Children's Museum of Maine building at 142 Free Street. Four finalist international architectural firms that included Adjaye Associates, Toshiko Mori and MVRDV created designs and in 2022 LEVER created the winning design. [8]
In 2023, the Portland Museum of Art requested that the building be reclassified as noncontributing to the historic district. In a letter to the Historic Preservation Board, museum director Mark Bessire said the 142 Free Street lacks "historical stature" because it was renovated in 1926 during the racist Jim Crow era. "Our region is one that is striving to become more inclusive, dynamic, and diverse – a city where everyone belongs – and some architecture styles can carry unfortunate legacies of the past into the future that undermine these values and goals,” Bessire wrote. [9]
History professor KC Johnson called the argument a "cynical effort to exploit contemporary cultural mores to serve the Museum of Art’s short-term economic interests." [10] Museum board chair Elizabeth McCandless wrote that demolishing 142 Free Street "is essential for our neighborhood, our city and for all who reside in and visit this area" and acknowledged the proposal's "divisiveness within the community." [11] A former curator of the National Building Museum, David Chase, wrote that "Destroying 142 Free Street and trashing the Payson Building smacks of contempt for history, contempt for context, contempt for local ordinances." [12] Former museum director Daniel O'Leary called the move "unwise and unwarranted." [13]
The owner of the Time & Temperature Building in the same historic district said ahead of the Portland City Council vote that reclassifying the historic status of 142 Free Street could jeopardize the historic tax credits needed to build 250 affordable apartments in the historic high-rise office building on Congress Street. [14]
The Portland Planning Board and the Historic Preservation board voted against reclassification. In May 2024, the Portland City Council ignored the advice of the planning and historic preservation boards and voted 6-3 to remove the building's historic classification. [15] In June 2024, Greater Portland Landmarks sued in Cumberland County Superior Court seeking to reverse the Portland City Council's decision to reclassify the building. [16]
Portland is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maine and the county seat of Cumberland County. Portland's population was 68,408 in April 2020. The Greater Portland metropolitan area has a population of approximately 550,000 people. Historically tied to commercial shipping, the marine economy, and light industry, Portland's economy in the 21st century relies mostly on the service sector. The Port of Portland is the second-largest tonnage seaport in the New England area as of 2019.
The University of Southern Maine (USM) is a public university with campuses in Portland, Gorham and Lewiston, Maine, United States. It is the southernmost of the University of Maine System. It was founded as two separate state universities, Gorham Normal School and Portland University. The two universities, later known as Gorham State College and the University of Maine at Portland, were combined in 1970 to help streamline the public university system in Maine and eventually expanded by adding the Lewiston campus in 1988.
The McLellan Galleries are a major exhibition space in the city of Glasgow, Scotland, situated behind a frontage of shops and offices in Sauchiehall Street.
James Browning Wyeth is an American realist painter, son of Andrew Wyeth, and grandson of N.C. Wyeth. He was raised in Chadds Ford Township, Pennsylvania, and is artistic heir to the Brandywine School tradition — painters who worked in the rural Brandywine River area of Delaware and Pennsylvania, portraying its people, animals, and landscape.
Joan Whitney Payson was an American heiress, businesswoman, philanthropist, patron of the arts and art collector, and a member of the prominent Whitney family. She co-founded, and was the majority owner of, Major League Baseball's New York Mets baseball franchise, making her the first woman to own a major league team in North America without inheriting it.
The Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, United States, is an art museum that specializes in American art. Its permanent collection includes works by such artists as Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, George Bellows, Rockwell Kent, Eastman Johnson, Fitz Henry Lane, Frank Benson, Childe Hassam, Will Barnet, and Maurice Prendergast, as well as a significant collection of works by the 20th-century sculptor Louise Nevelson. Four galleries are devoted to contemporary art.
John Calvin Stevens was an American architect who worked in the Shingle Style, in which he was a major innovator, and the Colonial Revival style. He designed more than 1,000 buildings in the state of Maine.
The L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries are a series of art galleries that are part of the Portland Museum of Art, which is located in the Arts District of Portland, Maine.
The McLellan-Sweat Mansion is a historic house museum on High Street in Portland, Maine. It forms the rear component of the Portland Museum of Art complex. Built in 1800–01, the house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970 as a well-preserved Federal style brick townhouse.
The Ogunquit Museum of American Art (OMAA) is an art museum located in Ogunquit, Maine. The Museum officially opened in 1953 and was founded by Lost Generation artist Henry Strater. Situated near Perkins Cove, the Museum and its three acres of sculpture gardens overlook Narrow Cove with views directly over the Atlantic Ocean. OMAA houses a permanent collection of over 3,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and photographs spanning from the late 1800s to the present.
The Charles Shipman Payson Building is the most recent expansion of the Portland Museum of Art (PMA) in Portland, Maine, located on the corner of High Street and Congress Square. Henry N. Cobb designed the Payson Building, which introduced over five times more gallery space than in the adjacent, historic PMA buildings. The building opened in 1983 after Mr. Payson donated 17 Winslow Homer paintings and ten million dollars to the museum. Similar in theme to these Homer paintings, the Payson building contains a collection of contemporary paintings and short-term exhibitions created by Maine artists, focusing on regional themes.
The Arts District is a section of downtown Portland, Maine’s designated in 1995 as to promote the cultural community and creative economy of the city. It covers a large part of upper Congress Street towards the West End and spans Congress Street toward the East ending at Portland City Hall and its Merrill Auditorium concert hall.
The Charles Q. Clapp House is a historic house at 97 Spring Street in central Portland, Maine. Built in 1832, it is one of Maine's important early examples of high style Greek Revival architecture. Probably designed by its first owner, Charles Q. Clapp, it served for much of the 20th century as the home of the Portland School of Fine and Applied Art, now the Maine College of Art. It is now owned by the adjacent Portland Museum of Art. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
Portland, Maine, is home to many neighborhoods.
Congress Street is the main street in Portland, Maine. Around 5.77 miles (9.29 km) long, it stretches from County Road, Portland's southwestern border with Westbrook, through a number of neighborhoods, before ending overlooking the Eastern Promenade on Munjoy Hill. In March 2009, the Portland City Council designated much of the inner portion of Congress Street a historic district. The western section of the street includes the city's Arts District.
Zillman Art Museum-University of Maine (ZAM) is an art museum in downtown Bangor, Maine. It is part of the University of Maine, which is located in nearby Orono, Maine. The University of Maine Art Collection was established in 1946, under the leadership of Vincent Hartgen. As the initial faculty member of the Department of Art and curator of the art collection, Hartgen's goal was to provide the people of Maine with significant opportunities to experience and learn about the visual arts and their diverse histories and cultural meanings.
Maine Maritime Museum, formerly the Bath Marine Museum, offers some exhibits about Maine's maritime heritage, culture and the role Maine has played in regional and global maritime activities. Maine Maritime Museum has a large and diverse collection, made up of millions of documents, artifacts and pieces of artwork and includes an extensive research library.
Rose Marasco, is an American photographer. She is considered to be "perhaps Maine’s most prolific photographer,” living and working there since 1979.
Jessica F. Nicoll is an American museum director and curator and an authority on American art and culture. She serves as Director and Louise Ines Doyle '34 Chief Curator of the Smith College Museum of Art. She was previously the Chief Curator and Curator of American Art of the Portland Museum of Art.
High Street is a downtown street in Portland, Maine, United States. It runs one-way for around 0.81 miles (1.30 km), from Commercial Street in the southeast to Forest Avenue in the northwest. It is one of the three main routes crossing the Portland peninsula in this direction, the other two being State Street and Franklin Street. Part of the street passes through the Spring Street Historic District and the city's Arts District.
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