Portland Museum

PORTLAND, Maine - Fine art museums can be heavy and intimidating or, like the Portland Museum of Art, they can be light, airy places of inspiration and discovery. While not designed specifically for children, it says a lot about the place that youngsters and teens appear to be as immersed in its exhibits as the adults are. "Our goal is to get kids, and all our visitors, to slow down," said Stacy Rodenberger, coordinator of school programs. "We want people to see what's happening in a work of art and talk about it. " Maine's largest and oldest public art museum, founded in 1882, owns more than...

PORTLAND, Maine — Edgar Degas, bristly, embittered, and occasionally misanthropic, may not have been an easy man to know. But there's something extraordinarily intimate and compelling about "Edgar Degas: The Private Impressionist," now nearing the end of its run at the Portland Museum of Art. The heart of the show, drawn from a private collection, features works on paper by Degas, from his callow days as a copyist at the Louvre to deep into...

PORTLAND, Maine — Winslow Homer died 100 years ago. The Portland Museum of Art, which is 12 miles from Prouts Neck, where Homer spent the fertile second half of his career, is marking the centenary with a small but captivating display of Homer’s paintings, prints, and drawings, all drawn from the museum’s collection. Given Homer’s preeminence in American art and his abiding popularity, which seems to unite both conservative and avant-garde tastes with its full-throated and enduring freshness, it is surprising that the centenary is not being marked by a more ambitious loan exhibition.

THE 2012 DECORDOVA BIENNIAL A survey of the latest in New England art, it has hits and misses, but is well worth checking out. Through April 22. DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln. 781-259-8355, decordova.org KIDSPACE: UNDER THE SEA Six international artists deck out this superb, hands-on children's gallery in all things blue, green and fishy at the always enjoyable Mass MoCA. Through May 28. Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams. 413-662-2111, www.massmoca.org ANDREW WYETH: LOOKING BEYOND An intimate show of less than two dozen works hinging on three 1950s paintings...

PORTLAND, Maine — Edgar Degas, bristly, embittered, and occasionally misanthropic, may not have been an easy man to know. But there's something extraordinarily intimate and compelling about "Edgar Degas: The Private Impressionist," now nearing the end of its run at the Portland Museum of Art. The heart of the show, drawn from a private collection, features works on paper by Degas, from his callow days as a copyist at the Louvre to deep into...

GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS: The Andrews Shaker Collection At: Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine. Through Feb. 5. 207-775-6148, www.portlandmuseum.org In the 1920s, an American couple named Edward and Faith Andrews began collecting chairs, tables, tools, chests, vessels, boxes, clocks, clothes, and other items created over the previous century by Shaker communities in New England. The Shakers were, you could say, a characteristically American phenomenon: a Utopian cult susceptible to strange visions and fired by self-destructive ideals - including a very un-Darwinian...

By Hilary Nangle, Globe Correspondent Considering a trip to Portland, Maine, America's Foodiest Small Town? Reserve in advance to check in at the Pomegranate Inn , an elegant, art-filled 1884 Italianate mansion-turned-B&B. Innkeeper Dana Moos keeps to the art theme at breakfast. Moos, author of the newly published The Art of Breakfast: How to Bring B&B Entertaining Home (Down East Books, 2011), considers the breakfast plate as her palette.       "It's about looking at a plate of food as a composition and balancing colors, textures, and...

If your first time away from home was to summer camp, you understand the allure. Northeast Historic Film has struck a chord with its planned April 18 showing of "Maine Summer Camps," a collection of archived camp films, at the Portland Museum of Art. "I don't think we realized how interested people would be in it," said Karan Sheldon, cofounder of the archival film group based in Bucksport, Maine. "A lot of these camps are family businesses, so there's family identity. And 16mm film, which much of this is, is very good at filming the environment and people in...

Olana State Historic Site 5720 State Route 9G Hudson, N.Y. 518-828-0135 www.olana.org Olana's grounds and visitors center are open, but house tours are not available until next year. For the exact date, call or check the website next spring. Grounds open daily 8 a.m. to sunset. Guided Cultural Landscape Tours (through the end of October) Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., $3 per person, free under age 12. Pai ntings from Olana "Treasures From Olana: Landscapes by Frederic Edwin Church," a traveling exhibition of 18 paintings including...

PORTLAND, Maine - Visitors to this vibrant coastal city tend to cluster in its Old Port neighborhood, where charming cobblestone streets teem with boutique stores, art galleries, and dozens of bars, restaurants, and coffee shops. Many of Portland's hotels are concentrated in this historic harborside part of town, too. But when we spent a weekend in Portland, we booked a room in the city's quieter West End. It's a sleepier neighborhood that's still distinctly urban, with lots of architecturally interesting homes, some beautifully restored and some run-down.

ASCO: ELITE OF THE OBSCURE, A RETROSPECTIVE, 1972 -1987 The first retrospective of the work of the Chicano conceptual and performance art group, this show comes from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and was part of Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration between 60 cultural organizations in Southern California aiming to tell the story of the birth of the LA art scene. Through July 29. Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown. 413-597-2429, wcma.williams.edu SILVER, SALT AND SUNLIGHT: EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY IN BRITAIN AND FRANCE A survey of photography in the years after its invention in 1839, featuring...

WESTBROOK, Maine - In a digital world where you can friend and unfriend Facebook connections with a keystroke, what is friendship, anyway? That was one of the questions photographer Tanja Alexia Hollander had in mind when she started traveling the country, shooting portraits of her Facebook friends last year. An exhibit of her ongoing Facebook-portrait project, "Tanja Alexia Hollander: Are You Really My Friend," opened at the Portland Museum of Art yesterday. Hollander had been photographing close friends for years, and she found the...

MADELEINE DE SINÉTY: Photographs At: Portland Museum of Art, 7 Congress Square, Portland, Maine,through Dec. 31. 207-775-6148, www.portlandmuseum.org PORTLAND, Maine - "Madeleine de Sinéty: Photographs," which runs through Dec. 31 at the Portland Museum of Art, consists of 71 photographs (most are black and white); three countries; several ways of life; and, most important, a single sensibility. That sensibility belongs, of course, to de Sinéty. Alert to continuity and change in how people lead their daily lives, she never forgets that a turning wheel, before it's...

GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS: The Andrews Shaker Collection At: Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine. Through Feb. 5. 207-775-6148, www.portlandmuseum.org In the 1920s, an American couple named Edward and Faith Andrews began collecting chairs, tables, tools, chests, vessels, boxes, clocks, clothes, and other items created over the previous century by Shaker communities in New England. The Shakers were, you could say, a characteristically American phenomenon: a Utopian cult susceptible to strange visions and fired by self-destructive ideals -...

ROCKPORT, Maine -- In 1826, Louisa Davis Minot sketched a scene of the Kennebec River in Maine on a lithographic stone she'd brought with her from Boston. She captured a winsome landscape, with scudding clouds and lithe trees bending over the calm river. When Minot returned home, she took the stone to a print shop, then sent a lithograph to a friend she'd visited on her journey. It wasn't the first print made in Maine, but as engraving shops began to thrive there in the mid-1820s, it was an early example of the democracy of fine art printmaking in the state.