Re: “Portland Museum of Art design finalists miss the mark” (Dec. 4, Page D3):
Robert Kahn’s Maine Sunday Telegram Maine Voices column not only echoes my disappointment in the four finalists’ designs for expansion of the Portland Museum of Art, but also reminds me of the contemporary curatorial trend to dumb down a museum’s permanent collection by creating a kind of artistic “smash burger,” whereby galleries are designed around themes.
It used to be a pleasure to know exactly where I could see works by Winslow Homer. No more. Currently, Homer’s paintings and prints are scattered around the PMA, creating a low common denominator for art appreciation, as if exhibiting works by period, artist or genre is beyond the intelligence of the PMA’s museum goers to grasp their quality without cue cards.
Possessed of only a modest Plus One Membership, I realistically recognize my minimalist two cents count for naught. Nonetheless, over the years, the PMA has been my cultural refuge where I revisit “old friends” on canvas, formerly and strategically hung with an art historian’s logic and aesthetic discernment.
I am not averse to change, but change for change’s sake is not an enlightened measure. Rather, it is an indicting measure of curatorial vacuity or a painfully woke desperation to appear relevant.
Albert H. Black
Ogunquit
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