I'm heading up to Portland, Maine, for the weekend. Part of my motivation is due to the incoming snowstorm. A few days earlier a storm arrived with a snow prediction of a few inches of snow, and southern Maine got about a foot of the white stuff, so I don't trust my luck when the forecasters are calling for real snow during my travel plans. My one-day trip now becomes two days, and this means I have a few hours to kill off in downtown Portland that I wasn't expecting.
I decide to visit the city's art museum.
Obviously there are some big name museums that can hold their own with the likes of Boston's MFA and Washington's National Gallery of Art, but, to be honest, Portland Museum of Art isn't one I'd put on the list. Of course, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford blew my socks off, too, so I shouldn't be such a snob.
The payback, of course, is that when I walk into the PMA, I look like an absolute fool. My eyes are wide, my mouth is gaping open, and I stand in the lobby like an idiot, absolutely transfixed by what I am seeing, and there is a lot to see. Sure, I expect the Wyeth collection, but I guess it didn't register in my brain that N.C. Wyeth was such an extensive literary illustrator, and his diversity is astounding, mesmerizing, even.
I'm also not expecting the Monet, Manet, Cassatt, Picasso, Rodin, Hopper, Homer, and Renoir masterpieces. Yeah, yeah, I know: I'm a snob, like these amazing pieces don't belong in ... well ... downtown Portland. But here they are, right in front of me, and I'm drooling like an amateur. And I'm not an amateur. I grew up in a house where art was revered and where we played games like
Masterpiece: The Art Auction Game (of which I still own the original board game). My mother was an art history major and we had art books all over the house. I could hold a conversation about Marc Chagall by the time I was ten.
This is all very fascinating, I know, but the strange twist comes from the part of the museum that fascinates me the most, and there is frightening little conventional art to see in it. The 1801 McLellan House (the original art museum, I believe) is a New England architectural gem. Of all the art I photograph (legally and not) inside the museum, I simply cannot stop taking pictures inside this building. The meticulous, handmade woodwork and the attention to design are haunting. Once I walk into this part of the museum, I'm thinking, "Picasso who?" and wonder how the lame delusions of "contemporary art" can even bear to exist with this classic marvel connected to the rest of the building.
I spend hours at the museum, twice the time I intend, and eventually indulge in a cafe lunch so I can rework some of the photos I have while the experience is fresh. And speaking of fresh, the snow I drove up early to avoid, the change of plans making this entire excursion possible? It never arrives. It is a mere dusting, not even worth shoveling. It does make Portland shine, though, as if it needs anything more beautiful than the museum to make it so.
