Portland Museum of Art launches competition to select architect for expansion — Portland Museum of Art

The Portland Museum of Art has launched an worldwide design competitiveness to choose an architectural organization to oversee a big enlargement of its downtown campus.

The museum declared options in February to begin elevating $85 million toward the job, which is likely to include building of a six- or seven-story, 60,000-square-foot setting up on the web-site of the former Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine, as nicely as some renovations to existing properties.

“We are enthusiastic to invite experts from all over the globe to internalize the goals of the PMA Blueprint and transform them into actual physical spaces that convey them to existence,” museum director Mark Bessire reported in a assertion. “This is no uncomplicated task, as our communities have designed their expectations crystal clear for open up and revolutionary spaces that enable a versatile array of systems, exhibitions, and artwork.”

The project’s completion is however 4 yrs absent, but Wednesday’s announcement is a big move. The museum is doing the job with a New York consulting company, Dovetail Style Strategists, to pick an architect. Firms have right until July 1 to submit interest. From there, the museum will find up to four corporations to build a idea layout for the undertaking, which will be because of in November and will be displayed publicly. A successful workforce will be picked in December.

Museum officers and board users have envisioned a developing that, in addition to additional than doubling the exhibition room, would be immediately recognizable on the Portland skyline, with a rooftop cafe and sculpture park.

“The distinctive level of competition we have developed permits for the power of architecture and the possible of concepts to collide, producing a platform that will captivate the pretty finest, assorted experts and will finally convert the PMA’s eyesight into a crafted truth,” Dovetail Layout Strategists President Susanna Sirefman explained in a assertion.

The museum has been arranging for an expansion for several several years, but these plans accelerated with the 2018 obtain of the developing at 142 Absolutely free St., which formerly housed the Children’s Museum.

The new making would be developed on that internet site and would include a floor ground with totally free artwork galleries, lecture rooms and community place, and space on the remaining floors for an auditorium, traveling exhibitions, places of work, an all-ages “makers space” and a images heart.

The museum’s campus also consists of four other buildings: the McLellan Residence, the Sweat Memorial Galleries, the Clapp Residence and the Payson Constructing, whose signature arches confront the intersection of Congress and Substantial streets.

Museum officers task the addition will enable Portland to accommodate involving 300,000 and 500,000 website visitors each individual calendar year to see a collection that incorporates impressionist masters like Monet and Renoir, Maine icons Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth, among the other folks, and extra modern names like mixed-media artist David Driskell and photographer Nan Goldin.

The task also coincides with an ongoing overhaul of Congress Square, one of the city’s busiest parts, that contains a redesign of the intersection and of the park that sits instantly throughout from the museum.