In the Bedroom (2001)
Hard Tellin’… is less an attempt to define Maine, or Maine in the movies, than an opportunity to celebrate four great films that accomplish something most art should aspire to: they capture the ineffable in a place and its people at a particular moment in time. They get at something unique and a bit hard to define about us. They feel, for lack of a better word, honest.
PMA officials say the planned addition, the museum’s first new building in roughly 40 years, will offer a variety of community amenities. Among them: a ground-floor gathering area, maker spaces, a flexible auditorium, nonprofit office spaces, and a rooftop restaurant, as well as a photography center and expanded galleries.
Read MoreBut at a more subliminal level, what is most affecting is the way the exhibition repeatedly and poignantly points us toward what unites us – as Northerners as well as human and cosmic beings. These include a love of the Earth, a desire for community, and irrevocable connections to our lineage and the cultural traditions and folklore of our past.
Read MoreDeSimone and the PMA have done a great job of placing artists from Maine in a meaningful international context. This is a show to be seen repeatedly.
Read MoreAnother definitive goal of the project is to expand the PMA’s rotating exhibition space, bringing it from 4,500 square feet to 10,000 and thus allow for more collaborations with institutions beyond Maine.
Read MoreThe museum’s capital campaign will fund the expansion from a total size of 38,000 square feet to nearly 100,000 square feet. The plans call for six- or seven-story building, an all-ages makers space, an auditorium, house local nonprofits and space for traveling exhibitions.
Read MoreThe Portland Museum of Art was founded in 1882 as the Portland Society of Art by a group of local artists. At 140 years old, it’s one of the country’s oldest art museums.
Read MoreIf realized, this will be the most ambitious renovation in the PMA’s 140-year history.
Read MoreWhile the groundbreaking for the building is likely three to four years away, it represents more than just adding space. It’s really about taking the museum in a new direction and opening it up.
Read MoreThe Portland Museum of Art is launching a once-in-a-generation, $85 million capital campaign to expand a downtown campus that no longer has enough space to accommodate both its growing collection of diverse work and a steadily increasing number of visitors.
Read More“For me, this [photography] collection is all about humanity. It’s that full spectrum of the human experience . . . and to me that has always been the beauty of this medium.” –Judy Glickman Lauder
Read MoreGlickman Lauder’s gift enables the museum to think broadly about the next chapter of PMA history, specifically about how we can create open experiences with art, grow and diversify our collection, and open new and dynamic community-centered spaces that welcome our myriad communities.
Read MoreThick froth at a wave’s lip dissembles into airborne droplets, each one bizarrely crisp; heavy, cascading walls of water appear as though carved with ridges, flash-frozen in place. They’re so real as to be unreal, which, I think is the point.
Read MoreWe can’t help but wonder what happened the second after Ross snapped these images. Was he engulfed by the waves? Knocked down and pulled into the violent surf?. . . All this points to the extraordinarily visceral quality of these wave images.
Read More“The best thing we can do is empower young people so they can make change. Art brings people together, and artists are really good about envisioning the future but also really good at seeing the moment in a way that we don’t see for a few years.” —Mark Bessire, Judy and Leonard Lauder Director
Read MoreThe museum is hosting three exhibitions that directly reflect their subjects: Clifford Ross: Sightlines, Walker Evans American Photographs and Richard Estes: Urban Landscapes,… But the brilliance of all this work is that it allows the viewer room for interpretation. There is no mistaking what these images are. What they mean is the mystery and reward of experiencing art in person.
Read MoreA reprise of the 1938 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that helped elevate Evans from documentarian to artist, “American Photographs” comes with a pedigree; but even without it, the show would be an uncommon draw. It could just as easily have been called “People Love Walker Evans, So Here Are Some Walker Evans Pictures,” and it would be just as true.
Read MoreWith the breadth of reference that enters smoothly and easily into his work, Driskell proves himself to be a one-of-a-kind artist — a scholar painter full of love and verve. Surely that is deserving of a museum’s attention. We ought to own up to the fact that it is long overdue.' This exhibition goes a long way toward making up for lost time.
Read More[David Driskell’s] art is quite challenging to categorize due to its diversity, but what remains constant in his work is the artist’s commitment to a symbolic form that elevates the spirit and the mind above that existing in the physical world.
Read MoreThis 1863 picture by Winslow Homer, thought to be his earliest completed effort in oil paints, marks a turning point in modern warfare. For all its plain-spoken simplicity, it is one of the most morally anguished, ominously charged paintings I know.
Read MoreThat is perhaps one of the most striking things about the narrative of this show: it’s organized in a way that visitors can see how the pivotal moments in Driskell’s career were taking place at the same time as he was also having a significant impact on the next generation of artists.
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