Portland Museum of Art Expansion | Portland

TC_zoid said:
It has become a P.R. disaster for the PMA. The arch firm they hired is not qualified for this kind of project. The PMA needs to hire as a consultant, Elkus Manfredi Architects in Boston, to come up with a proper solution. They designed the idea behind the USM addition (Scott Simons took over after). They are brilliant. All that the PMA's director has been able to come up with for a rebuttal is, "The Children's Museum is from the Jim Crow era," therefore, or implied, it must be destroyed, wiped out from the present. They had decided to focus their efforts on checking all the right DEI boxes, instead. I've worked in national media my entire career with many stories to tell, and this is up there with some of the "best". (And I've got plenty of microwave popcorn in my kitchen.)
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The PMA received a proposal from a world-class architect-cum-Maine resident. Their proposal incorporated the Fore Street building into its solution and yet they dismissed the proposal. So, yes, the PMA made the disasterous situation they only now are beginning to recognize they are in. There was no need for it and either the Board or the Director should be asked to account for why they disn’t choose a compliant design when they had the chance — and STILL have the chsnce, frankly.

They can require the chosen team to work within the existing framework of rules or they can replace the team if they feel design changes would violate the solution they proposed.
 
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Some Congress Square Photos I came across accidentally on Ebay
 

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GIL said:
The PMA received a proposal from a world-class architect-cum-Maine resident. Their proposal incorporated the Fore Street building into its solution and yet they dismissed the proposal. So, yes, the PMA made the disasterous situation they only now are beginning to recognize they are in. There was no need for it and either the Board or the Director should be asked to account for why they disn’t choose a compliant design when they had the chance — and STILL have the chsnce, frankly.

They can require the chosen team to work within the existing framework of rules or they can replace the team if they feel design changes would violate the solution they proposed.
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Yes, I do like Mori's design for the PMA addition considerably more than the current proposal, though I don't think it's substantively incorporating the old children's museum building into it. But the PMA is dead set on this Portland, OR arch firm with their DEI box checks and "brilliant" tribute to Maine's indigenous population. I don't think there is a compromise potential here. It's the PMA's money. Better something than nothing, so let them have their way. We don't want another Federated scenario in which nothing gets built, or for quite some time.
 
The structure at 142 Free St., formerly the Children’s Museum, was not built but renovated by Stevens. This shows that the architect himself valued the role of updating structures to meet the needs of a community as it evolved. In keeping with this ethos, the building has been altered numerous times over the years.
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What does it say about our community when we cannot loosen our grasp on any shard of history to make space for something truly extraordinary?
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These are the two lines from Lauren Fensterstock's opinion piece that struck me. If we wait long enough, will everything become historically important? Then what, are we done?
 
nomc said:
These are the two lines from Lauren Fensterstock's opinion piece that struck me. If we wait long enough, will everything become historically important? Then what, are we done?
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But it’s not a binary choice: historic or extraordinary. Something extraordinary can *incorporate* history, rather than plowing it under to replace it. The Museum, unexpectedly, is making a binary choice.
 
It's unexpected that they don't want a sliver of a building enshrined in glass?
 
nomc said:
It's unexpected that they don't want a sliver of a building enshrined in glass?
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That team made a meaningful gesture toward recognizing and incorporating the facade of the contributing structure within the expansion and the team lead is a long-time Maine resident, so yes, I still find the choice by the PMA surprising.
 
I thought the Toshiko Mori was the design that encapsulated the facade of the Chamber of Commerce building and the disgusting saw-tooth roof design?

I didn't think they were the ones from Maine?? Yes/No?

Yeah, meaningful gesture or not to include the facade or a team lead being a Maine Resident - that design is a HARD PASS for me.
 
GIL said:
The PMA received a proposal from a world-class architect-cum-Maine resident. Their proposal incorporated the Fore Street building into its solution and yet they dismissed the proposal. So, yes, the PMA made the disasterous situation they only now are beginning to recognize they are in. There was no need for it and either the Board or the Director should be asked to account for why they disn’t choose a compliant design when they had the chance — and STILL have the chsnce, frankly.

They can require the chosen team to work within the existing framework of rules or they can replace the team if they feel design changes would violate the solution they proposed.
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Though I am a huge proponent of historic preservation, I personally do not believe the Children's Museum is worth saving as it has been bastardized multiple times over the years from it's original iteration. I am in favor of razing it to accommodate the PMA expansion. HOWEVER this entire controversy is due to poor leadership at the PMA. How they could believe this would not become a major hurdle (or that it would but everyone would just conveniently ignore the fact) is incompetency at it's best. Heads should roll.
 
DanielPWM19 said:
I thought the Toshiko Mori was the design that encapsulated the facade of the Chamber of Commerce building and the disgusting saw-tooth roof design?

I didn't think they were the ones from Maine?? Yes/No?

Yeah, meaningful gesture or not to include the facade or a team lead being a Maine Resident - that design is a HARD PASS for me.
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Yes,
DanielPWM19 said:
I thought the Toshiko Mori was the design that encapsulated the facade of the Chamber of Commerce building and the disgusting saw-tooth roof design?

I didn't think they were the ones from Maine?? Yes/No?

Yeah, meaningful gesture or not to include the facade or a team lead being a Maine Resident - that design is a HARD PASS for me.
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Mori and her husband have had a house on an island in midcoast Maine for nearly 40 years.

www.nytimes.com

In Her Maine Garden, Toshiko Mori Dreams of Plant-Based Buildings (Published 2022)

Cultivating potatoes and cabbages, the architect has discovered, is analogous to her design practice.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
She's no more a Maine resident than John Travolta or Martha Stewart. She runs an international arch firm from a remote Maine island? Hardly. It's two months tops in the summer. She lives and works in Manhattan and grew up in Japan. I can't see anyone wanting to live in a 200 year-old house on a remote island in Maine except for a summer. That would be masochistic, if so. Her associates go to The Hamptons, and she, up there.
 
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I think if we look at all of the different iterations of buildings, churches, and houses at that location over time ... the Chamber Building is hardly anything worth preserving. I'd take any of the prior structures to this one. The Chamber building often fell into disrepair and ignored until it was acquired by the Children's Museum.

The only real issue here is PMA's handling of the situation and subsequent messaging. The PMA should just humbly own their mistake, make some kind of concessions, and move on.

Worst Case? Move the structure to Spring Street. Reposition the design of the winning firm's design. Or just move on with the original proposal.

Last thing we need is for Portland to be hit with another recession and miss out on some kind of beneficial and meaningful development YET AGAIN.
 
TC_zoid said:
She's no more a Maine resident than John Travolta or Martha Stewart. She runs an international arch firm from a remote Maine island? Hardly. It's two months tops in the summer. She lives and works in Manhattan and grew up in Japan. I can't see anyone wanting to live in a 200 year-old house on a remote island in Maine except for a summer. That would be masochistic, if so. Her associates go to The Hamptons, and she, up there.
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Hopefully her home did not float away in the last storm.
 
Public hearing before the Planning Board on the proposed delisting of 142 Free St last night.
“The city’s properties cannot be frozen in place, especially when they have little historic value,” said Scott Simons, one of the architects on the project. “The proposed museum expansion is simply the next development of the 142 Free St. property. It is the right proposal for this time and this place.”
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“They are asking you to say that the careful inventory and exhaustive evaluation of all the buildings in the district were done in error by the city staff when the district was first created,” said Carol De Tine, board vice president at Greater Portland Landmarks said. “It wasn’t. They’re asking you to say that the Historic Preservation Board, the planning board and the City Council were all wrong in 2009 when they approved the Congress Street Historic District and the classifications of the buildings within it. They weren’t.”
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Current status: tabled while the PB asks the Corporation Counsel's office to help them understand contradictory parts of the HP ordinance.

🍿
 
nomc said:
As it prepares for $100M expansion, Portland Museum of Art lays off 13

Does not affect the recently unionized workers. Also, the museum's director make 500k/yr??! (he's taking a pay cut)
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This museum has little effective leadership. If Bessire is making 500K that is a de facto crime in a small city like Portland. The expansion needs to be focused more on how to generate additional revenue and not primarily a testament in honor of indigenous and other kinds of peoples, though there is nothing wrong with that. Clever spaces with food and drink (it's really all or mostly what people want to do today), inventive merchandise, new technology exhibits, partnerships, and fun events are key. Attendees will get bored looking at the same "art" in today's dynamic fast-paced image firing world. The original idea of a museum needs to be updated to create new and continued interest.
 
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TC_zoid said:
Clever spaces with food and drink (it's really all or mostly what people want to do today), inventive merchandise, new technology exhibits, partnerships, and fun events are key. Attendees will get bored looking at the same "art" in today's dynamic fast-paced image firing world. The original idea of a museum needs to be updated to create new and continued interest.
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A shift toward a more immersive experience, à la Meow Wolf, would be welcome and keep me coming back.
 
In the PMA's presentation at the 2/13 Planning Board meeting, they showed a massing of how the proposed building would look if they were to keep 142 Free St. and instead build their expansion on the surface parking lot on Free St. next to the Clapp house. I don't totally hate it honestly.

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