New museum director embraces innovation
Photo/Portland Museum of Art
Mark Bessire, Portland Museum of Art's new director
Mark Bessire began his tenure as director of the Portland Museum of Art on March 2 at a particularly tough time for nonprofits. Endowments have been hammered by the stock market plunge, and an increasingly needy nonprofit world must struggle for dwindling philanthropic dollars. What's an arts organization to do? Plan, Bessire says, for brighter days.
"My job, working with the [PMA] board, with the community, is to set forth the plan," says Bessire, 44. "What's the museum going to look like in five years? Ten years?"
Planning at the museum, which was opened to visitors in 1911 and presents 16 exhibitions a year in addition to its permanent collection, involves figuring out how to apply the mission to the nonprofit's recent property purchases -- the Clapp House next door on Spring Street and the former YWCA lot just beyond it, as well as the Winslow Homer Studio in Prouts Neck -- and recreate the community excitement around recent successes like the "Backstage Pass: Rock and Roll Photography" exhibit, which during its dead-of-winter run from January through March attracted a whopping 50,000 visits, or roughly a third of the 150,000 visits the museum typically sees in a year.
The PMA, like another of the city's arts behemoths, the Portland Symphony Orchestra, is faced with the challenge of appealing to the next generation of culture seekers while also staying true to a mission defined by tradition. At the heart of the museum's collection are classic 20th century pieces from artists like Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth and Rockwell Kent that Bessire says "tell the history of the Maine community, Maine and Maine artists in art history." These are the works that help make the PMA a go-to place for visitors and residents, and businesses trying to woo clients or potential employees. But Bessire believes methodical innovation is what will ensure the future of the PMA.
When he looks down Spring Street from the window of his office in the circa-1801 McLellan House, which the museum has used as administrative offices and gallery space since 1911, Bessire envisions a museum campus incorporating the Clapp House next door and the empty lot at 87 Spring St. He wants to eventually connect the properties so visitors can walk from the modern main building into the Clapp House and perhaps a new building beyond it through climate-controlled hallways. Bessire believes this stretch of Spring Street is in flux -- the Holiday Inn By the Bay across the street is for sale, and the perennial debate over moving the Cumberland County Civic Center continues to simmer -- and so the time is right for the PMA to stake its claim to this area of the arts district with renewed vigor.
Bessire may be uniquely poised to make these ambitious plans a reality -- a native New Yorker, he earned a master's degree in art history and an MBA in New York City and then spent more than a decade in the Maine art world, first as director of the Institute for Contemporary Art and most recently as director of the Bates College Museum of Art. Bessire has lived in Portland for 11 years with his wife, Aimee, a professor at the Maine College of Art, and their two children.
PMA's new director will need his savvy. The PMA's endowment suffered in 2008 like that of many nonprofits, whittled down from $36 million this time last year to $22 million today. Bessire says the museum has always operated "lean and mean" by balancing its budget every year, but still had to lay off six employees recently in a restructuring prompted by the recession. The museum now operates with 45 employees, and an annual budget of $4.5 million. Bessire's time is now primarily occupied with meeting current and potential donors, and charming them to keep those dollars coming in.
"Really, the biggest challenge is the economy," he says. "This is a year to be on your toes. I think we're all just trying to get through this year so we can plan for the future."
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