Description

The Museum's collection of more than 15,000 objects includes decorative and fine arts 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 Museum purchased the Winslow Homer Studio (located in Prouts Neck, ME) in 2006 and is currently restoring the building. The Studio will be open to the public in September 2012.

Please visit the Museum website for more information on our additional sevices.

History

The Portland Museum of Art, founded in 1882, is Maine's largest public art institution. The Museum's three architecturally significant buildings unite three centuries that showcase the history of American art and culture. Originally founded as the Portland Society of Art, the Museum used a variety of exhibition spaces until 1908. That year Mrs. 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. 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, which opened in 1983. In 2002, the restoration of the McLellan House and Sweat Galleries was completed, with an emphasis on 19th-century American art and interactive computer stations for education.

Artifacts Collections

Collecting Mission Statement: The Portland Museum of Art will expand its active program of acquisition, interpretation, exhibition, documentation, and preservation of works of art in order to meet its responsibility as a guardian of our cultural heritage to audiences in New England and beyond. The collection will emphasize 18th through 21st century American art, especially related to Maine, as well as 19th through mid-20th century European art and other works of art that complement and diversify these strengths.

Research Collections

The Portland Museum of Art has an informal archives collection consisting of Museum publications, minutes from Board and Committee meetings, and scrapbooks dating from the year of its founding, as well as curatorial files for each object, and artist, donor, and vendor files. The Museum has also recently initiated an Oral History project, which consists of recordings and transcripts of individuals involved with the Museum as early as the 1950s. These materials are available to serious researchers upon request.

Facilities