News Center Maine: Portland Museum of Art continues efforts to broaden historical perspectives

Passages in American Art doesn't shy away from the classics, rather it explores the realities they sometimes hide.

September 13, 2024
By Donovan Lynch

This story originally aired on News Center Maine. You can watch it here.

PORTLAND, Maine — The Portland Museum of Art is on a mission to re-examine its inventory through a different lens—all in the public eye. 

The Passages in American Art exhibit presents Maine art through the ages with relevant context added, related to the Wabanaki and Black history of the state.

The mixture of 19th-century naturalist works and contemporary Indigenous art seeks to complicate the sometimes straightforward narratives many rely on to understand the past.

"We’re thinking of this very expansively," Ramey Mize, an associate curator at the museum said Thursday. "There’s not one right interpretation or one exclusive meaning."

The exhibit is accomplished with the help of historians and Indigenous leaders in Maine, writing explanations to accompany the paintings.

Weatherbeaten, a Homer scene of a violent ocean pushing against the rocks, is explored through a Passamaquoddy context, with Indigenous leader Chris Newell penning a passage next to the frame explaining how private ownership along the Maine coast has deprived the tribe of its once plentiful access to the ocean.

The curators hope this kind of tension—between a work of art painted in a Western style and the Indigenous themes it shows, perhaps without intention—will complicate how we all view history.

"We’re challenging people to think a little bit differently and outside of their own box and maybe even their own comfort zone,” Greg Norstrom, who directs visitor experience at the museum, said Thursday.

Working on Passages has broadened Nordstrom’s own understanding in the process.

"What we consider in the canon of art should be much wider," he said.

Museum staff said the exhibit is fluid and does not have a set end date.