Portland Museum of Art
Encyclopedia
The Portland Museum of Art is an art museum in Portland, Maine
. Founded as the Portland Society of Art in 1882, it is located in the downtown area known as The Arts District, and is the largest and oldest public art institution in the U.S. state
of Maine
.
, 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. 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.
Currently the Museum is visited by 160,000 visitors a year, approximately 13,000 of whom are schoolchildren. Museum membership is at an all-time high of 8,000 members and continues to grow. Now and into the future, the Museum is committed to serving as dynamic center for the visual arts and strives to be an essential resource for the people of Maine and New England.
includes more than 17,000 objects items of the decorative and fine art
s dating from the 18th century to the present. The heart of the Museum's collection is the State of Maine Collection, which features works by artists such as Winslow Homer
, Marsden Hartley
, John Marin
, Louise Nevelson, and Andrew Wyeth
. 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 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, has transformed the scope and quality of the American collection, bringing to the Museum its first paintings by George Bellows
, Alfred Thompson Bricher
, Abraham Walkowitz
, and Jamie Wyeth
, and adding masterpieces to the collection by Childe Hassam
, Fitz Henry Lane, and N. C. Wyeth
.
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 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.
Portland, Maine
Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...
. Founded as the Portland Society of Art in 1882, it is located in the downtown area known as The Arts District, and is the largest and oldest public art institution in the U.S. state
U.S. state
A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
of Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
.
History
The Museum used a variety of exhibition spaces until 1908; that year Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat bequeathed her three-story mansion, now known as the McLellan HouseMcLellan-Sweat Mansion
The McLellan-Sweat Mansion is a historic house museum at 111 High Street in Portland, Maine. It forms the rear component of the Portland Museum of Art complex....
, and sufficient funds to create a gallery in memory of her late husband, Lorenzo De Medici Sweat
Lorenzo De Medici Sweat
Lorenzo De Medici Sweat was a U.S. Representative from Maine.He was born in Parsonsfield, Maine, where he attended Parsonsfield Seminary, a Freewill Baptist school. Sweat then attended Bowdoin College, from where he graduated in 1837. He graduated from Harvard University in 1840, having studied...
, who was a U.S. Representative
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
. Noted New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
architect John Calvin Stevens
John Calvin Stevens
John Calvin Stevens was an American architect who worked in two related styles — the Shingle Style, in which he was a major innovator, and the Colonial Revival style, which dominated national domestic architecture for the first half of the 20th century...
designed the L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries
L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries
The L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries are a series of art galleries that are part of Portland Museum of Art, which is located in the Arts District at Portland, Maine.-History:...
, 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. In 1976, Maine native Charles Shipman Payson
Charles Shipman Payson
Charles Shipman Payson was the owner of the New York Mets of the National League from through . In 1975, he inherited the club upon the death of his wife, Mets founder Joan Whitney Payson....
promised the Museum his collection of 17 paintings by Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....
. 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
Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
Pei Cobb Freed & Partners is an architectural firm that was founded in 1955 by I. M. Pei as I. M. Pei & Associates, in 1966 called I. M. Pei & Partners, and received its current name and organization in 1989. The founders were I. M. Pei, Henry N. Cobb, and Eason H. Leonard. Pei and Leonard retired...
. 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
Hamilton Easter Field
Hamilton Easter Field was an important American artist, teacher, author, critic, collector and patron of the arts.-References:...
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
Joan Whitney Payson
Joan Whitney Payson was an American heiress, businesswoman, philanthropist, patron of the arts and art collector, and a member of the prominent Whitney family...
, a Whitney family
Whitney family
The Whitney family is an American family notable for their social prominence, wealth, business enterprises and philanthropy, founded by John Whitney who came from London, England to Watertown, Massachusetts in 1635.-Rise to prominence:...
heiress and New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
socialite
Socialite
A socialite is a person who participates in social activities and spends a significant amount of time entertaining and being entertained at fashionable upper-class events....
) of 20 impressionist
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and post-impressionist
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
works of art was given to the Museum on permanent loan. In 1996, Elizabeth B. Noyce, art collector and Maine philanthropist
Philanthropist
A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes...
, bequeathed
Bequest
A bequest is the act of giving property by will. Strictly, "bequest" is used of personal property, and "devise" of real property. In legal terminology, "bequeath" is a verb form meaning "to make a bequest."...
66 works of American art
American Art
American Art is the debut album of the band Weatherbox. It was released on May 8, 2007 on Doghouse Records. The album received critical acclaim from several sources including underground music distribution company Smartpunk, who lauded the band's style:...
, which is the most extensive and diverse gift of American art ever presented to the Museum.
Currently the Museum is visited by 160,000 visitors a year, approximately 13,000 of whom are schoolchildren. Museum membership is at an all-time high of 8,000 members and continues to grow. Now and into the future, the Museum is committed to serving as dynamic center for the visual arts and strives to be an essential resource for the people of Maine and New England.
Collections
The Museum's collectionCollection (museum)
A museum is distinguished by a collection of often unique objects that forms the core of its activities for exhibitions, education, research, etc. This differentiates it from an archive or library, where the contents may be more paper-based, replaceable and less exhibition oriented...
includes more than 17,000 objects items of the decorative and fine art
Fine art
Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....
s dating from the 18th century to the present. The heart of the Museum's collection is the State of Maine Collection, which features works by artists such as Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....
, Marsden Hartley
Marsden Hartley
Marsden Hartley was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist.-Early life and education:Hartley was born in Lewiston, Maine, where his English parents had settled. He was the youngest of nine children. His mother died when he was eight, and his father remarried four years later to Martha...
, John Marin
John Marin
John Marin was an early American modernist artist. He is known for his abstract landscapes and watercolors.-Biography:...
, Louise Nevelson, and Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Newell Wyeth was a visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century....
. The Museum has the largest European collection in Maine. The major European movements from impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
through surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
are represented by the Joan Whitney Payson
Joan Whitney Payson
Joan Whitney Payson was an American heiress, businesswoman, philanthropist, patron of the arts and art collector, and a member of the prominent Whitney family...
, Albert Otten, and Scott M. Black
Scott M. Black
Scott M. Black is an American investor, philanthropist and art collector. He founded Delphi Management, a leading money management firm that counts among its clients Michael Bloomberg....
collections, which include works by Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...
, Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
, René Magritte
René Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte[p] was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images...
, Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
, Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, and Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
. The Elizabeth B. Noyce Collection, a bequest of 66 paintings and sculptures, has transformed the scope and quality of the American collection, bringing to the Museum its first paintings by George Bellows
George Bellows
George Wesley Bellows was an American realist painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City, becoming, according to the Columbus Museum of Art, "the most acclaimed American artist of his generation".-Youth:Bellows was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio...
, Alfred Thompson Bricher
Alfred Thompson Bricher
Alfred Thompson Bricher was a painter associated with White Mountain art and the Hudson River School.-Life and work:...
, Abraham Walkowitz
Abraham Walkowitz
Abraham Walkowitz was an American painter grouped in with early American Modernists working in the Modernist style.-Birth and education:...
, and Jamie Wyeth
Jamie Wyeth
James Browning Wyeth is a contemporary American realist painter. He was raised in Chadds Ford Township, Pennsylvania, son of Andrew Wyeth and grandson of N.C. Wyeth...
, and adding masterpieces to the collection by Childe Hassam
Childe Hassam
Frederick Childe Hassam was a prolific American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressionism to American collectors, dealers, and museums...
, Fitz Henry Lane, and N. C. Wyeth
N. C. Wyeth
Newell Convers Wyeth , known as N.C. Wyeth, was an American artist and illustrator. He was the pupil of artist Howard Pyle and became one of America's greatest illustrators...
.
Facilities
The Museum's three architecturally significant buildings unite three centuries that showcase the history of American artVisual arts of the United States
American art encompasses the history of painting and visual art in the United States. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, artists primarily painted landscapes and portraits in a realistic style. A parallel development taking shape in rural America was the American craft movement,...
and culture.
Since its opening in 1983, the Charles Shipman Payson Building
Charles Shipman Payson Building
The Charles Shipman Payson Building is the most recent expansion of the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine, located on the corner of High Street and Congress Square. Henry N...
has been the public face of the Museum. Although the original vision of both the architect and the Museum's strategic plan
Strategic planning
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. In order to determine the direction of the organization, it is necessary to understand its current position and the possible avenues...
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
Fundraising
Fundraising or fund raising is the process of soliciting and gathering voluntary contributions as money or other resources, by requesting donations from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies...
for the preservation
Historic preservation
Historic preservation is an endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historical significance...
and educational interpretation of its two historic structures.
The project 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.