Portland Museum of Art

Portland Museum of Art Review

Maine's largest public art institution's collection includes fine seascapes and landscapes by Winslow Homer, John Marin, Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper, Marsden Hartley, and other American painters. Homer's Weatherbeaten, a quintessential Maine Coast image, is here, and the museum owns and displays, on a rotating basis, 16 more of his paintings, plus more than 400 of his illustrations. In 2006, it bought the artist's mansard-roofed seaside studio on Prouts Neck in Scarborough; reservation-only 2½-hour tours depart from the museum in spring and fall. The museum has works by Monet and Picasso, as well as the Joan Whitney Payson Collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art includes works by Degas, Renoir, and Chagall. I. M. Pei designed the strikingly modern Charles Shipman Payson building, which fittingly displays modern art. The nearby L. D. M. Sweat Galleries showcase the collection of 19th-century American art. Special events are held in the gorgeous federal-style 1801 McLellan House.