How does a superhero become superhuman? Friedrich Nietzsche can offer some guidance: “He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.” Portland Museum … Continue reading →

For Jim Morin, all art is political. As the editorial cartoonist at the Miami Herald for 42 years, Morin created witty, often biting cartoons that are nationally and internationally syndicated, and he’s received the Pulitzer Prize in journalism for editorial … Continue reading →

“You can’t go home again.” So said Thomas Wolfe, and photographic artist Jona Frank has been saying the same thing with her work for some 20 years. Longer even, if you start from the moment she began developing pictures. In … Continue reading →

Lesley Dill, a mixed-media artist whose works are in the collection of over 50 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, has just completed a new monumental exhibition a decade in … Continue reading →

As anyone who has tried to purchase property in the past year knows, Portland has a pressing need for diverse, affordable housing. The city’s newly adopted building code contains a major coup on that front, allowing for the creation of … Continue reading →

Unlike so many artists drawn to Maine for its arresting landscapes and jagged coastline, the pioneering modernist Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) was born here. A Lewiston native, Hartley had a complicated relationship with his home. Bleak occurrences—his mother dying when he … Continue reading →

Imagine life in Belle Époque Paris, the center of the modern art world in France. You are a 33-year-old American woman, an artist. After studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, you find your work has been well received, … Continue reading →

Every July the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland hosts a monumental summer gala—their largest fund-raising event of the year—complete with dinner, dancing, and cavorting on the museum grounds. The party’s purpose is to present the Maine in America Award, honoring … Continue reading →

On September 30, 1976, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art opened Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750-1950. It was the museum’s preeminent exhibition for the American bicentennial year. The sweeping show, which featured over 200 works by 63 known … Continue reading →

Just before the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, in a letter dated March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, “I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.” As … Continue reading →