The Portland Museum of Art (PMA) will host several pieces from the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, N.H., beginning November 10. The American and European masterpieces from the Currier will be integrated into the Portland’s permanent collection on view and will be signified on the gallery labels by a logo.
The Currier was closed in June for a 30,000-square-foot expansion that will leave its galleries closed for approximately a year. The Currier is lending the PMA 15 important paintings, including works by Childe Hassam, Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso (on view for six months) and Charles Sheeler.
The PMA’s galleries will be transformed by these important loans. The Currier’s collection is particularly strong in American Impressionism, and the fresh colors, expressive handling and poetic compositions of Frank Weston Benson, Childe Hassam and Edmund Tarbell will enhance the PMA’s own offerings.
Of particular note is Hassam’s poetic “The Goldfish Window,” 1916, part of a series of “window pictures” that beautifully demonstrate the artist’s love of light and fondness for Japanese-inspired design. The striking colors and forms of American Modernism in the work of Sheeler, among others, will be a valuable addition to the PMA’s holdings, while Picasso’s “Woman Seated in a Chair,” 1941, will be the centerpiece in a group of works celebrating late Cubism.
Claude Monet’s “The Seine at Bougival,” 1869, after being featured in the PMA’s major summer exhibition, “Paris and the Countryside,” will have a prominent place in the gallery dedicated to French Impressionism and the Barbizon School.
The PMA was selected to receive these paintings because of its proximity to the Currier’s audience as well as its reputation as an exemplary art institution. The Currier is also lending paintings to the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. Currier members will receive free admission to the Portland Museum of Art during the months that their museum is closed.
The Portland Museum of Art, Maine’s largest art museum, showcases fine and decorative arts from the Eighteenth Century to the present. From Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth to Picasso and Monet, the museum features three centuries of art and architecture.
The museum is at Seven Congress Square. For more information, 207-775-6148 or www.portlandmuseum.org.
