Summer at the Museums: Portland, Maine

This is a continuation of Summer at the Museums, the Working My Way North Edition. If you find yourself on a Maine adventure this summer, a good stop on your way is the port city of Portland. Portland has some very interesting history and a few great restaurants (Bresca and the new Salt Exchange are two recommendations). I think there is some sort of subsidy from the local government to open a coffee shop here: there must be fifty of them and they all look pretty good, too.

After you’ve eaten and got your caffeine fix the Portland Museum of Art has a pretty fair collection, including five or six N. C. Wyeths -- Lobstering off Black Spruce is enough reason to stop on its own. A Marsden Hartley, Camden Hills from Bunkers Island, is a close second. An exhibit, Call of the Coast: Art Colonies of New England, explores the influence of four communities (some images here): Cos Cob and Old Lyme in Connecticut and Ogunquit and Monhegan on the Maine coast. There are lots of Impressionist landscapes and seascapes in the Monet style, but the show gets more interesting for me with the Robert Henri-inspired group mixing it up on the Maine coast: Rockwell Kent, Yashiro Kuniyoshi, Edward Hopper, and (new to me) Gertrude Fisk. The exhibit will be up through October 12.

My goal is to follow the Maine Art Museum Trail of seven museums: now the pressure is on.

PREVIOUSLY IN SUMMER AT THE MUSEUMS:
Walters Art Museum | Museum of Modern Art | National Gallery of Art | Hirshhorn