| From Portland to Paris: Mildred Burrage’s Years in France April 21, 2012 - July 15, 2012 This exhibition will focus on Portland-born artist Mildred Burrage (1890-1983), who as a young aspiring painter traveled in the early 1900s to Giverny, France. There Burrage trained her eye on the landscape, creating oil paintings and filling sketchbooks with her Impressionist style. She wrote copious letters to her family back in Maine, detailing her adventures and providing vivid accounts of the artists, dealers, and distinguished figures whom she encountered, including French artistic legend Claude Monet and avid collectors Gertrude and Leo Stein. While Burrage was a prolific artist up until her death, this exhibition will celebrate these crucial, formative years (1909-1914) when she traveled abroad and was introduced and exposed to modern European movements. Comprised of approximately 70 works of art, including paintings, drawings, and never-before-exhibited letters, this exhibition will reflect a unique time of innocence, ebullience, and optimism in Mildred Burrage’s life and career, and in the American and European psyche before the onset of the First World War. This exhibition is supported by Sally Wallace Rand, William G. Waters, and by Wilmont and Arlene Schwind in honor of Sally Wallace Rand. Corporate sponsorship is provided by The Bear Bookshop, Marlboro, VT. In the News |  Mildred Giddings Burrage (1890-1983), A November Day: Brittany, 1912, 1912, oil on canvas, 31 7/8” x 25 1/2”. Gift of the artist. Photo by Melville McLean. |
| Edgar Degas: The Private Impressionist February 23, 2012 - May 28, 2012 Edgar Degas: The Private Impressionist will be the first comprehensive exhibition at the Museum devoted to the 19th-century French master Edgar Degas and his works on paper. Comprised of more than 70 drawings, prints, pastels, and photographs as well as several sculptures, the exhibition will provide an insightful exploration of the oeuvre of one of the most skilled and complex artists in art history. In addition to masterworks by Degas, the exhibition will include a select group of rare works on paper by artists of his circle, including captivating works by Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. To add even greater depth to the exhibition, generous loans to the Museum from major benefactor Scott M. Black including Degas’ Portrait of Alexis Rouart (1895) and from Les Otten including Degas’ Fourth Position in front on the left leg will be part of the installation. Paintings and drawings by Jane Sutherland, a contemporary New England artist greatly inspired by Degas, will add yet another dimension to the exhibition. The exhibition was organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA and Denenberg Fine Arts, West Hollywood, CA. In the News |  Edgar Degas,1834 - 1917, Before the Races, 1895, Collection of Robert Flynn Johnson. Courtesy Landau Traveling Exhibitions. |
| Tanja Alexia Hollander: Are You Really My Friend? February 4, 2012 - June 17, 2012 Facebook friendships exist in the nebulous world of cyberspace. Social networking creates a forum where we may connect or reconnect deeply with dear friends or become acquainted with new ones on a superficial level. What happens when we reach across real time and space to physically connect with these same “friends”? In her new exhibition, Maine artist Tanja Alexia Hollander examines that question; she collapses the intangibility of cyberspace by traveling around the world on a modern-day odyssey to actually visit her 600 (and growing) Facebook friends. In this rich and multi-dimensional project, Hollander photographs her Facebook friends, prints images on paper, and exhibits the prints on gallery walls, causing her cyber-friend connections to become real and personal. Hollander’s process will be explored by encouraging interaction through visitor comments and an ever-changing installation of portraits through the run of the exhibition. Are viewers supposed to acknowledge the artist’s creativity, photographic skill, and role within the tradition of portraiture, or should we instead critique the management of her Facebook page? This exhibition is the fifth in a series of exhibitions called Circa that explores compelling aspects of contemporary art in the state of Maine and beyond. Circa is a series of exhibitions featuring the work of living artists from Maine and beyond. Circa 2012 brochure: Interview with Museum Director Mark Bessire and artist Tanja Alexia Hollander
In the News “Tanja tackles friendship…” VoxPhotographs weblog, Sunday, February 19, 2012. “Tanja Hollander takes Facebook to the PMA” by Nicholas Schroeder, The Portland Phoenix, Wednesday, February 8, 2012. Related Events
Corporate Sponsor: |  Tanja Hollander, June Fitzpatrick, Portland, Maine, 2011, Archival pigment print. Courtesy of Carroll & Sons, Boston, MA. |
