PMA Magazine

“This is a big shift,” said Shalini Le Gall, the museum’s chief curator. “I’m an art historian, but art history is not the only way to access art in a museum. We want to show people that art by its nature is not stable, and the scope of interpretation will always be changing.”

It’s a show where labels really matter because they give new, contemporary context with which to consider the works on view. They really push us to think in new ways about who gets to write the history of art in America, who was left out of it and how that is – thankfully – changing.

The PMA’s Assistant Curator of American Art, Ramey Mize, spoke with News Center Maine about Passages in American Art.

“Art takes so many different forms,” said Mize. “It’s not just a painting on a wall. That’s a big takeaway of this project.”

An advisory committee shaped the project around three major themes – Maine’s role in transatlantic slavery, environmental change and the ongoing presence of Wabanaki and other Indigenous nations throughout North America. The resulting exhibit includes items that visitors will see for the first time and familiar works that will be framed in new ways.

With this complete reinstallation of its permanent collection, the Portland Museum of Art enters the expanding fray of American art museums interrogating their own historical collecting practices with a critical eye.

Fill your summer with art by taking in these 16 shows at museums from Ogunquit to Rockland.