Set to hear a great deal this summer nigh the Center for Maine Contemporary Art'due south new facility in Rockland, non just for the fine art it will present throughout the flavor but for the edifice itself.

The bulk of the swanky, gimmicky architecture in Maine comes in the class of private homes. Toshiko Mori's new building volition be open to museumgoers and holds a prominent infinite in downtown Rockland. It is a game changer in terms of leading Maine fine art spaces, our statewide cultural demographics and the time to come of Maine's fine art market place.

Glistening with plate glass and sleek aluminum, Mori'south building follows Bauhaus-like modular logic with everything in multiples of four anxiety. Architecture fans volition sense the sophisticated rigor of Gordon Bunshaft in the façade and a nod to Alvar Aalto, the luscious Finnish modernist, in Mori's curvaceous, wainscoted front desk. The exhibition spaces look to Chelsea galleries – self-consciously elegant white box spaces with gleaming cement floors and hints of industrial scaling nigh notable in the sawtooth roof that allows for 3 additional vertical windows above the primary gallery.

This building is world-class architecture past an international architect. It will win awards. Mori, who has a home in Maine with her art glass superstar husband Jamie Carpenter, is Japanese. She graduated from Cooper Union in 1971 and continues to base of operations her practice in New York. She has a list of awards longer than many leading architects' list of buildings, and she was not only the first female professor in Harvard University'due south Graduate School of Design to receive tenure, just she chaired the architecture department from 2002 to 2008.

CMCA director and curator Suzette McAvoy during construction.

CMCA managing director and curator Suzette McAvoy during construction. Daniel Kany Photo

In other words, not only is information technology a skillful building, just its significance is enhanced by Mori'south oeuvre. In that sense, it shares qualities with Frederick Fisher's art buildings at Colby, Henry Cobb'southward Portland Museum of Fine art building and Bowdoin's jewel of a museum originally designed past Charles McKim.

One departure is that CMCA is a kunsthalle, which ways that it doesn't have a permanent collection (or object donors) to maintain. Past contrast, Colby's leading space in the new Fisher-designed wing, the 3,485-square-foot Michael and Sally Gordon Gallery, so far has been used exclusively to showcase the museum's permanent holdings. Things can change: The Portland Museum of Art recently mounted a pair of successful contemporary shows by Duncan Hewitt and Ahmed Alsoudani in its all-time space, the soaring third floor gallery that has primarily been used to show the permanent collection. At the risk of repeating myself, information technology'south a tacit acquittance that the otherwise excellent building's first floor gallery, which was designed for lead exhibitions, is a rather a disaster.

At Bowdoin, Frank and Anne Goodyear have grown the role of their best spaces, the Boyd Gallery with its glorious natural lite and the adjacent Shaw Ruddock Gallery. They now house R. Luke DuBois' beautifully installed show, "Now," the most ambitious contemporary art installation in Maine in years.

Ane site where the strategic use of space could shift for the meliorate is the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. Managing director pro tem Andres Verzosa is an installation specialist. His photography shows in the littlest gallery were the museum'south best last year. I await he may bring the small but exquisite permanent collection out front end. The Barn Gallery Associates Fly is not a corking infinite for paintings, but it would be terrific for contemporary art.

Certainly, nosotros tin await CMCA curators' employ of the museum'due south new space to evolve over time.

Jonathan Laurence photo

The new Center for Maine Gimmicky Art in Rockland. Jonathan Laurence photo

Mori's building features three principal galleries in addition to the excellent exhibition-intended entry and hall spaces. Ii take lower, 12-foot ceilings and seem to be spot-on for showing painting and video. The soaring primary gallery, at ii,600 square feet, has without a uncertainty claimed a spot on the list of Maine's very best art spaces, alongside the aforementioned galleries at Colby and Bowdoin, as well as the Bates College Museum of Art'south upper gallery, the Maine College of Art's Institute of Contemporary Art's Lunder and Evans Hunt galleries, the Corey Daniels Gallery in Wells, the University of Maine Museum of Art's main exhibition space in Bangor and the top flooring of the University of New England's 1977 Art Gallery in Portland.

Leading with Jonathan Borofsky for the initial exhibition in the main gallery is a stroke of brilliance. Borofsky is an international superstar (1 of the few Mainers to have had a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, for example) who lives in Maine merely has not shown his work here for over forty years.

What convinced Borofsky, in part, to practice the show is the fact that his studio is almost the exact same size as the 50-foot-by-52-human foot gallery. I saw the installation taking shape in Boroskfy's studio, and we're all in for a treat.

The brilliance is that CMCA is leading with a bear witness designed by a notable and accessible creative person who knows that space intimately and has had many months to design the show with his actual works – or brand new ones specifically to suit it.

Jonathan Laurence Photo

The new museum holds a prominent place in downtown Rockland. Jonathan Laurence Photo

While Mori's main gallery is a thing of beauty, it is not similar other regional art spaces. On ane hand, CMCA Director and Curator Suzette McAvoy is possibly the best exhibition designer in the state. She could work magic even in the lopsided Rockport building that was the museum's former home and that distracted viewers with its always-imminent intent to collapse. (I made my kids wait exterior whenever I visited.) But some of the ceilings under the new sawtooth roof accomplish to 26 anxiety, and there isn't much art made in Maine premised on that scale.

If you accept always seen small paintings past Alex Katz in Colby's high-walled gym-like Paul J. Schupf wing, then yous tin can imagine the problem I foresee. Katz, who will be one of the 3 featured artists to open the new Mori building, makes work as monumental as anyone in the state, just even his small paintings get lost on giant walls. Even with McAvoy at the captain, there volition exist a learning bend afterward the honeymoon. Simply if an exhibition solution is needed, what will it await like? Will Maine artists make new work to scale for the space? Or will the solution entail curatorial outreach to discover the correct work – even if that means considering (gasp!) artists from away?

Whatever happens, nosotros shouldn't forget what an extraordinary set of steps CMCA has taken to go from its dilapidated Rockland barn to this earth-class architectural gem. For this, I think nosotros could probably forgive a stumble or two.

Freelance writer Daniel Kany is an art historian who lives in Cumberland. He can be contacted at:

[email protected]

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