In the Vanguard: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 1950-1969 explores how an experimental school in rural Maine transformed art, craft, and design in the 20th century and helped define the aesthetics of the nation’s counterculture. The Washington Post says "It’s a revelatory show about a summer craft school that opened in rural Maine in 1950, broke down barriers between art and craft, established itself as a hotbed of creative experiment and is still operating." Don't miss it before it closes on September 8.

Global Warnings Marjorie Moore Fineberg Family Community Room “This body of work came at a time when my interests, like those of the Inua, were very much influenced by anthropomorphism. By this term I mean, dreaming human/animal relationships—imagining how we humans construct relationships with animals based on our differing cultural and spiritual histories. I made these works near the time of the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1989. Like many others, I was outraged by this ecological disaster. But, at the time the signals of climate change were not so charged in my mind as they are today. I barely knew those two words. As I reflect upon this work three decades later, I realize the importance of these ‘story-book’ like images of human/animal creatures afloat in boats or huddled on icy landscapes. I now think they foreshadowed the dire conditions we can articulate today.” Marjorie Moore resided in Maine from 1970 to 1993, from 1993 to 2017 she lived in Houston and Austin,Texas. She has now returned to Maine full time, she lives and works on Great Diamond Island in Casco Bay. Moore has a long history of exhibiting her work in galleries and museums. She is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including The MacDowell Colony, National Endowment for the Arts, and an Earthwatch Fellowship to Venezuela. Carving Out Meaning Lynne Shulman Spiegel Gallery Carving Out Meaning — Inspired by folk art traditions and her love of the natural world, Lynne Shulman’s sculptures and reliefs explore the narratives of human and animal connections. Shulman often incorporates found and vintage objects into her detailed wood carvings. In this process of integration, she considers the beauty and former purpose of these objects—a piece of an old wooden lobster trap, a shuttle from a closed Maine woolen mill, a vintage woolen spool—in order to suggest metaphor and new meaning. Each artwork relies on an understanding of the unique qualities of the specific subject—the watchful sheepdog and it’s herd, the beauty of the heron’s eye, and through the use of subtle and meticulous detail, she transforms her subjects from purely representational models to expressive and emotive works of art. Lynne Shulman has been an artist and art educator in Maine for over 40 years. Since graduating from Pratt Institute (BFA) and SUNY New Paltz (MSAE), she has worked in a variety of sculptural mediums, each affording her a unique way to communicate her artistic vision. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout Maine. Since her retirement from teaching art, she has focused her attention on creating wood sculptures, drawing upon her experiences along coastal Maine and her travels beyond. Queens USA: A Global Celebration Audrey Gottlieb Third Floor Sanctuary Photography Curator - Nanci Kahn Audrey Gottlieb has been documenting the borough of Queens, New York, where she lived and worked for 30 years. Formerly made up of a loosely knit string of 64 villages, Queens has ridden the crest of America’s waves of immigration. Her photographs reflect the lives and celebrations of many new and established immigrant groups, living and working in architecturally unglamorous neighborhoods. The images depict rituals and traditions, including ethnic feasts and processions, that the newcomers carry over from the old country and blend into the new one. Families that escaped war-torn places now live in Queens, in harmony, next door to ancestral enemies. Gottlieb feels no end to her delight in transcribing a surreal quality to the flurry of activity and language surrounding the rituals of immigrants trying to assimilate to a different culture. Reflecting on their lives, she believes, has given her a better understanding of the journey and assimilation process of her own grandparents.

Open-Ended: New Acquisitions at the Portland Museum of Art highlights many of the spectacular new objects that join the PMA's collection of over 18,000 works of art and provides the opportunity to share the stories behind these works and how they came to the PMA.