* Maine’s artist-endowed foundations get a head start on summer with a collaborative exhibition of American modernism that features the artwork of artists who left their homes and entrusted their legacies to Maine’s larger art community. The Portland exhibition includes art by Stephen Pace, Kenneth Noland, Joseph Fiore, Beverly Hallam, Joan Marie Beauregard, Bob Crewe, John Heliker, Robert LaHotan, John David Ellis and Leo Rabkin. Roughly two dozen works by these men and women are on view through June 30 at the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, 13 Brown St., Portland.
“Celebrating Maine’s Artist-Endowed Foundations” does exactly what its title suggests by calling attention to the art these artists made, as well as the roles of these foundations in Maine’s emerging art culture. The state is now home to eight foundations that provide residency opportunities and financial support to younger artists. This exhibition was drawn from the collections of those foundations. “These artists are having a really large beneficial impact on the Maine artist community directly. This is an opportunity to showcase works by these artists, to give people a better idea of who they were and the kind of work they did,” said executive director Susan Larsen.
Among the paintings on view is an exuberantly colorful untitled oil on canvas from 2002 by Ellis. It’s a collection of energetic shapes and forms, loosely aligned horizontally. One of the forms suggests an abstracted human engaged in celebration or dance. Pace’s “Women Shelling Peas,” an oil from 1962, is more sedate, picturing a figure at rest, basket in lap, surrounded by the colors of nature.
“We’re all just getting our feet under us in terms of what we can be doing and what we can do with each other,” Larsen said. “This exhibition is just a start.”
“Celebrating Maine’s Artist-Endowed Foundations,” through June 30, Rabkin Foundation, 13 Brown St., Portland. rabkinfoundation.org, 542-6294
* The Portland Museum of Art focuses on the work of American photographer Clarence H. White this summer in an exhibition that will introduce his work to new generations and reintroduce it to those who already know it. “Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895-1925” opens June 22. The first survey of White’s work in more than 40 years, it will examine how it was shaped by the aesthetic, social, economic, technological and political transformations of the times. He was born in Ohio, moved to New York and died in Mexico at age 54.
He was a founding member of the Photo-Secession movement, an early-20th-century effort to promote photography as fine art. He became known for capturing America’s early-20th-century mood and established the Clarence H. White School of Photography in New York, the first American school to teach photography as art. He became better known as a teacher, neglecting his own work. The exhibition will re-examine his work, including more than 100 prints, albums and illustrated books by White, as well as paintings, prints and drawings by artists who influenced or were influenced by pictorial photography. In addition, the show includes images by his friends, collaborators and students, including Alfred Stieglitz.
“Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895-1925,” June 22 to Sept. 16, Portland Museum of Art, 7 Congress Square. portlandmuseum.org, 775-6148
Lois Dodd, “Moose,” 1958, oil on linen, 32 by 42 inches, will be on view at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art.
* Looking ahead to midsummer, the Ogunquit Museum of American Art unveils “Lois Dodd: Drawings and Paintings” on July 14. Dodd is a long-loved Maine artist who has been coming to the state since the 1950s. This exhibition will assemble drawings and paintings from seven decades, and Dodd will participate in a Totally Tuesday Talk at 6 p.m. July 31.
“Lois Dodd: Drawings and Paintings,” July 14 to Oct. 31, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, 543 Shore Road. ogunquitmuseum.org, or 646-4909
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