now On view

Passages in American Art is a fundamental reinterpretation of the PMA collection, platforming multiple voices, revealing new ways of looking at some of the museum’s most beloved works of art, and inviting community members to drive the conversation.

The project examines the existing collection, and along with recent acquisitions, commissions, and select long-term loans, integrates Atlantic narratives and Indigenous perspectives to expand the story of American art. 

Through the expertise and partnership of multiple thought-partners, Passages is a responsive installation honoring multiple truths, complexities, and understandings. An Advisory Committee, comprised of members from Akomawt Educational Initiative, Atlantic Black Box, Indigo Arts Alliance, Gulf of Maine Research Institute, and Portland Public Schools, represent both existing and newly formed relationships with the museum.

About the Project 

Made possible through the generosity of the Terra Foundation for American Art, Maine Community Foundation, Wyeth Foundation for American Art, Unum, and the Friends of the Collection, Passages highlights both major and lesser-known works in the PMA’s holdings and places them in conversation with one another across the second floor of the museum.

“With the vital support of the Terra Foundation for American Art, we are committed to thinking in collaborative, cross-cultural, and multidisciplinary ways to foreground how our collection can be a starting point for engaging with important questions: from considering legacies of colonialism and slavery, to exploring the very definition of ‘America,’ and researching artistic resonances with climate change,” says Shalini Le Gall, Chief Curator, Susan Donnell and Harry W. Konkel Curator of European Art. By bringing contemporary and historical works together, Passages aims to spark connections and ideas for future action around the many themes, issues, and histories on view. 

The word “passages” speaks to the interconnected facets of the reinstallation, all of which engage diverse stories of water and land. From canoe portages traversed by Wabanaki nations through the Land of the Dawn (Maine and Maritime Canada) to the migration of sea-run fish and the human disruption of their waterways; from the Middle Passage endured by millions of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the passage of laws, tides, and time.  

“The movement that ‘passages’ evokes can be associated with travel and arrival, gesturing to the legacy of global trade networks, slavery, and colonization in the Americas. The works on view in Passages invite us to consider our own relationship to these histories, to ask questions, connect the past with the present, and celebrate the beauty, knowledge, and resilience that art provides amidst profound change and upheaval,” says Ramey Mize, Assistant Curator of American Art. “This installation, in its effort to expand the boundaries of what we consider to be ‘American’ art, is evolving and ongoing. Over the coming years, new stories, ideas, and works of art will be introduced throughout the galleries, highlighting the many possibilities that this project has opened.” 

The exhibition has been built through a long-term approach to help transform the space for PMA visitors, educators, and students and is accompanied by over 30 interviews with artists, community members, and collaborators who will be accessible by text, audio guide, a reflection space, and an in-gallery video. 

BEHIND THE Advisory Committee

“The processes we have been a part of for this project at the PMA have helped us think of applicable modes of engagement that are grounded in dialogue, sharing of knowledge, and honoring a variety of orientations to that knowledge,” says endawnis Spears (Diné/Ojibwe/Chickasaw/Choctaw), Akomawt Educational Initiative. “It was an important and helpful process to participate in.”

The PMA has previously partnered with Advisory Committees and prioritized multi-vocal approaches in major exhibitions, including N.C. Wyeth: New Perspectives (2019), Stories of Maine (2020), Mythmakers: The Art of Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington (2020), and David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History (2021). Passages marks an extension of this approach into the permanent collection for the first time. This collection focus allows more visitors to experience the installation for a longer period, and to learn more deeply about the complex and often erased histories within American art and the American story more broadly. The Advisory Committee members were compensated for their work, and through multiple meetings over the course of the year, helped advise, co-develop, and reinterpret the American art galleries alongside the PMA’s Curatorial and Learning and Community Collaboration teams. 

“This reinstallation offers us a vital opportunity to present a more expansive story of American art and to foreground narratives that have yet to be shared in our galleries,” says Christian Adame, the Peggy L. Osher Director of Learning and Community Collaboration. “Working collaboratively and in dialogue with our partners has been a profound experience. It will shift the way we do our work moving forward.”  

 Atlantic Black Box, with Meadow Dibble and Seth Goldstein
A grassroots historical recovery project that empowers communities throughout New England to research, reveal, and begin reckoning with the region’s complicity in the slave trade and the global economy of enslavement while recentering the stories of its racially marginalized groups. 

Portland Public Schools, with Fiona Hopper 
The Portland Public Schools is comprised of 17 schools and Portland Adult Education, the largest adult education program in Maine, which serves about 2,000 students in its academic and workforce programs each year. PPS has a talented, dedicated, and increasingly diverse staff of more than 1,300 educators and other staff members, and offers a wide variety of educational opportunities from prekindergarten to college preparation. 

Multivocal Contributors
As a living installation, the PMA plans to collaborate with additional community members and this will be an evolving list of contributors. 

Programs and Events

In The News

Additional Resources & Readings

This Collection Reinstallation is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art. 

The Terra Foundation for American Art, established in 1978 and having offices in Chicago and Paris, supports organizations and individuals locally and globally with the aim of fostering intercultural dialogues and encouraging transformative practices that expand narratives of American art, through the foundation’s grant program, collection, and initiatives.

The project is made possible through the Terra Foundation for American Art’s Re-envisioning Permanent Collections grant program. Grants totaling nearly $3.1 million were awarded to 45 arts and cultural organizations in the United States to support permanent collection projects that question and broaden our understandings of American art and histories with the public. The PMA is grateful for the Terra Foundation for American Art’s support and belief in the museum, our Art for All mission, and ensuring museums are spaces for exploring shared histories and human experiences.

Foundation Support Provided by:

Corporate Support Provided by:

with support provided by Friends of the Collection.

Banner image: Jared Lank (Mi’kmaq, born 1991), The White Mountains, Spring 2016, Courtesy of the artist