Portland Press Herald: Our View: Portland Museum of Art plan deserves to proceed

A $100 million investment that will transform the museum for the better should not be threatened by an inflexible rule.

December 14, 2023
By The Editorial Board

This article appears in the Portland Press Herald.

“The sale for $2.1 million means the Portland Museum of Art gains flexibility for expansion.”

That’s from an Oct. 2019 Press Herald report on the sale of 142 Free Street to the to the Portland Museum of Art. The Free Street building started out as a theater in 1830 and, over the course of three renovations – one by the renowned and prolific Maine architect John Calvin Stevens in 1921 – also served as a home to the Portland Chamber of Commerce and the Children’s Museum of Maine.

The buzz about the museum’s new capacity for expansion was sustained throughout COVID-19. By Feb. 2022, our report about the plan to double the size of the campus referred again to the acquisition of the former Children’s Museum building as “a golden opportunity” for the PMA.

A lot has crystallized in the intervening months. The museum’s $85 million expansion project is now a dazzling $100 million project. After an international contest resulting in a shortlist of four proposals, a jury selected the proposal of LEVER Architecture, a design firm with offices in Oregon and California.

And, crucially, the development is at a standstill: 142 Free Street carries a designation that protects the structure from the demolition required to build in its place.

The city’s Historic Preservation Board is in the process of reviewing the museum’s application to have that designation removed and clear the way for building. The planning board will review the application and Portland City Council, taking those determinations and other factors into account, will make a call.

We believe the council should support the museum’s effort to recreate its campus – and, in the process, to revive the part of town we sometimes refer to as the Arts District, which lately feels to be at a very perilous crossroads.

The preservation of city history matters; decision makers must take care not to set a bad precedent. This editorial board sees this case as unique, however, with unique, unmissable upsides for Portland if the project can proceed as planned.

The renderings of the LEVER design show the new wing to be modern, tall, glassy and generally capacious. The city received 2,000 responses from the public during an uncommonly collaborative selection process. Much has been made of the selected plan’s homage to the Wabanaki and of its use of “mass timber,” an environmentally friendly category of wood product that the museum wants to source here in Maine.

Unfortunately, the case for the demolition of the column-fronted Free Street building, heavy on inclusivity and social justice, has been clumsy at times. Mark Bessire, the museum’s director, said in one interview that the museum needed to create distance between itself and the “unfortunate legacies” of the Jim Crow era.

Museum leadership has also seized on an assertion by the president of the board of the Children’s Museum that “New Mainers” found the columns of the 142 Free Street façade especially unwelcoming and “psychologically intimidating.” If inclusion is indeed central to the drive for expansion, the PMA would do well to strike the term “paradigm shift” from its slogan for the project.

In general, the museum and the many supporters of the LEVER vision shouldn’t shy away from making a cold, hard case for the demolition of this building. The city stands to reap the benefits of a major investment that draws people to the museum. Despite a population boom and a growing collection of impressive work, museum visits have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. Congress Square is in bad shape right now – vacant buildings and units now threaten to outnumber those occupied.

The PMA’s imposing brick front and lack of an obvious entrance seems likely to have shut out infinitely more people than the white columns of the former Children’s Museum ever did. The museum has poured time and money into a proposal that promises to correct that and convert itself into an inviting mainstay for the general public.

The far-reaching cultural, civic, social and economic benefits of this investment should outweigh competing concerns.