Portland Museum of Art

The Portland Museum of Art, commonly known as the PMA, is the largest and oldest public art institution in the U.S. state of Maine. Founded in 1882 as the Portland Society of Art, it is located in downtown Portland's Arts District. The museum holds more than 22,000 artworks spanning from the 18th century to the present and attracts approximately 140,000 visitors annually, with around 8,500 members. Its holdings are distinguished by strong concentrations in American art with New England connections, particularly works by Maine-associated artists, and by the largest European collection in the state.

The institution that became the Portland Museum of Art was established in 1882 as the Portland Society of Art. For its first quarter century, it operated without a permanent home, using various exhibition spaces around Portland until 1908. That year, Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat bequeathed her three-story mansion, the McLellan House, together with funds to create a gallery in memory of her late husband, U.S. Representative Lorenzo De Medici Sweat. The L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries, designed by noted New England architect John Calvin Stevens, opened to the public in 1911.

The museum's modern expansion was catalyzed by a 1976 gift from Maine native Charles Shipman Payson, who promised 17 paintings by Winslow Homer and donated $8 million toward a new building. Recognizing the physical limitations of the existing facilities, the museum commissioned Henry Nichols Cobb of I. M. Pei & Partners to design the Charles Shipman Payson Building. Construction began in 1981, and the $8.2 million facility opened in 1983.

Payson's gift spurred further acquisitions. The Hamilton Easter Field Art Foundation Collection of more than than 50 works by American modernists arrived in 1979. In 1991, the Joan Whitney Payson Collection of 20 impressionist and post-impressionist works was placed on permanent loan. The most extensive gift of American art came in 1996, when art collector and Maine philanthropist Elizabeth B. Noyce bequeathed 66 works. From 1960 to 1962, Donelson Hoopes served as director. In 2000, the museum launched a $13.5 million capital campaign to integrate its three buildings, completing that project in October 2002. In 2007, the museum purchased and later demolished the neighboring 1961 YWCA building for staff parking. In 2014, Scott Simons Architects was engaged to develop a campus masterplan. A significant 2026 purchase of a nearby Free Street building and two adjacent parking lots from MaineHealth for $14 million will allow administrative offices to relocate, freeing gallery space in the main facility.

The Portland Museum of Art's collection of more than 22,000 artworks is anchored by American art with particular emphasis on artists connected to Maine and New England. The museum holds the largest European collection in Maine, with major movements from impressionism through surrealism represented. Three significant collections of European painting provide overview from French impressionism through German expressionism to classical modernism: the Joan Whitney Payson Collection, the Albert Otten Collection, and the Scott M. Black Collection.

The American holdings were substantially expanded by the 1979 Hamilton Easter Field Art Foundation Collection of more than 50 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by early 20th-century American modernists. The 1996 Elizabeth B. Noyce bequest of 66 paintings and sculptures remains the most extensive and diverse gift of American art ever presented to the museum. In 1991, 400 graphic works by Winslow Homer from the collection of Peggy and Harold Osher significantly enlarged that artist's presence. The museum also maintains a significant collection of works on paper.

The Portland Museum of Art's signature holdings include 17 paintings by Winslow Homer, the gift of Charles Shipman Payson that catalyzed the museum's expansion. The American collection features works by Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Louise Nevelson, Andrew Wyeth, and John Greenleaf Cloudman, among others. The Elizabeth B. Noyce Collection includes paintings by George Bellows, Alfred Thompson Bricher, and Abraham Walkowitz, as well as masterpieces by Childe Hassam, Fitz Henry Lane, and N. C. Wyeth.

European highlights from the Joan Whitney Payson, Albert Otten, and Scott M. Black collections include works by Giambattista Pittoni, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, René Magritte, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, and Auguste Rodin. The Albert Otten Collection, acquired in 1993, features works from the first half of the 20th century including Paul Klee's Mai, Max Pechstein's Früher Morgen, Wassily Kandinsky's Stramm, and Edgar Degas's sculpture Position de quatrième devant sur la jambe gauche. The Scott M. Black Collection includes five sculptures by Auguste Rodin and paintings by Paul Cézanne, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, Paul Signac, René Magritte, Théo van Rysselberghe, Camille Pissarro, Georges Braque, Giorgio de Chirico, Jean Arp, and Maximilien Luce. From the Joan Whitney Payson Collection, notable works include Gustave Courbet's Temps d'Orage à Etretat, Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Confidences, Paul Gauguin's Paysage à Saint-Cloud, and Maurice Brazil Prendergast's Rhododendrons, Boston Public Gardens.

The museum also acquired Winslow Homer's former studio at Prouts Neck in Scarborough, Maine, on January 31, 2006. The property, located approximately 15 kilometers south of Portland, was the artist's long-term workplace and is accessible through guided tours.

The Portland Museum of Art occupies three architecturally significant buildings spanning three centuries. The McLellan House, built in 1801 under architect John Kimball Senior in the Georgian style, was bequeathed to the museum in 1908. Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat stipulated that the building's exterior and essential interior features remain unchanged, preserving it as an exemplary representation of 19th-century domestic culture.

Adjacent to the McLellan House, the L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries were completed in 1911 to designs by John Calvin Stevens in the historicist style. These galleries were restored to their Beaux-Arts splendor during the 2000-2002 integration project.

The Charles Shipman Payson Building, designed by Henry Nichols Cobb of I. M. Pei & Partners, opened in 1983 as the museum's public face. Its construction on the site of the former Libby & Sons Department store (built 1897 as the Young Men's Christian Association Building) and the Women's Christian Temperance Union Building, both demolished in 1980, represented a major physical expansion. The Payson Building houses European and American works from the 20th and 21st centuries, while the McLellan House and Sweat Galleries emphasize 19th-century American art.

The 2002 project to integrate the three buildings created distinctive spaces for the 19th-century American collection and allowed more complete presentation of the permanent collection. The museum also owns the building at 142 Free Street, built in 1830 as a theatre and later a Baptist church for 85 years before renovation by John Calvin Stevens in 1926 for the Portland Chamber of Commerce. It subsequently served as the Children's Museum of Maine. Classified as a contributing structure in the 2009 Congress Street Historic District, the building was purchased by the PMA in 2019.

The Portland Museum of Art is located in the downtown Arts District of Portland, Maine. The museum is open from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. every day except Monday and Tuesday. The institution is accessible through its three-building campus: the McLellan House and L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries, restored and integrated in 2002, and the Charles Shipman Payson Building. The Winslow Homer studio at Prouts Neck, approximately 15 kilometers south of Portland in Scarborough, can be visited by guided tour. The museum's website is http://www.portlandmuseum.org/.