Inspired by David Brooks Stess’ powerful and thought-provoking photographs and his decades of experience working alongside Native Americans and migrant field hands during Maine’s annual blueberry harvest, I wanted to create a recipe that would showcase Maine’s precious blueberries. This cake, which is great for a crowd at a party or just as an afternoon snack, has a mouthful of blueberries in every bite and the tangy lemon icing is just enough to offset the sweet berries.

Blueberry Rakers: Photographs by David Brooks Stess is part of the Portland Museum of Art’s innovative Circa series and is on view until Sunday, May 19. The exhibition is a stunning reminder of Maine’s deeply set roots in agriculture, and of how much we still depend upon the hardworking hands of laborers who often go unnoticed and unappreciated.

Blueberry Rakers Bundt Cake with Lemon Icing
Cake
2 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour and 2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon fine sea salt or kosher salt
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
3 large eggs, at room temperature*
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup buttermilk
3 1/2 cups Maine blueberries** (I used the wild variety, but cultivated berries are sometimes more readily available; frozen berries are also fine)

Glaze
2 cups powdered or confections’ sugar Zest
juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Generously grease a 10-cup Bundt Pan, either with butter or a nonstick spray. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, sift together 2 1/2 cups flour (leaving out the extra 2 tablespoons), baking powder, and salt and set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer or large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, and lemon zest until light and impossibly fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Then, with the mixer on a low speed, add your eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl between each addition. Beat in vanilla, briefly. Add 1/3 flour mixture to batter, beating until just combined, followed by half the buttermilk, another 1/3 of the flour mixture, the remaining buttermilk and remaining flour mixture. Scrape down from time to time and don’t mix any more than you need to. Toss the berries with the remaining 2 tablespoons of flour. With a rubber spatula, gently fold the berries into the cake batter. The batter will be very thick and this will seem impossible without squishing the berries a little, but squished berries aren’t always a bad thing!

Spread cake batter — you might find it easier to plop it in the pan in large spoonfuls, because it’s so thick — in the prepared baking pan and spread the top smooth. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, rotating the cake 180 degrees after 30 (to make sure it browns evenly). The cake is done as soon as a toothpick comes out clean of batter.

Set cake pan on a wire rack to cool for 30 minutes, before inverting the cake onto a serving platter to cool the rest of the way. Cool completely.

Once cool, whisk together the powdered sugar, lemon zest, juice and butter until smooth and very, very thick. (If you’d like it thinner, add more juice, but I like the thick drippiness of it, seen above.) Spread carefully over top of cake, letting it trickle down the sides when and where it wishes. Serve at once or keep it covered at room temperature for 3 to 4 days.

Notes-
*Because I used farm-fresh, richly colored eggs, my batter and cake was subsequently darker than if you use store bought eggs.
**If you choose to use cultivated blueberries, you may want to decrease the amount slightly, because of their larger size.

Caitlin Sackville is a Visitor Experience Associate at the PMA. Visit her blog, Look Good Eat Well for creative recipes and original photography.

Inspired by Mamascout’s blog post, “25 mini-adventures in the library,” we wanted to share 25 mini-adventures for families to have at the PMA!

1. Grab a museum map from the Visitor Experience Desk. Now, with your eyes closed, point to a spot on the map. Open your eyes–that’s where you should explore today!

2. Pick a gallery and spend 10 minutes there. After 10 minutes have everyone in your family present their favorite piece and explain why they picked it.

3. Bring sketchbooks and pencils. Sit in a gallery and draw for a while.

4. Explore the new PMA Family Space: Design Lab.

5. Visit the McLellan House. Which room you would want as your bedroom if you lived there in the 1800s? Talk about what life would be like if this were your house—what would you eat or wear?

6. Bring a blank postcard to the museum, or pick one up in the PMA Store. Draw your favorite painting on the back and mail it to a friend.

7. Grab a cell phone and dial into Family Voices Cell Phone Tour.

8. Introduce yourself to a Gallery Officer. Ask what their favorite painting is in the gallery.

9. Check out the PMA’s Sculpture Gallery, then explore Portland on foot and look for more sculptures. Which are your favorites?

10. Visit a local antiques or furniture store. Pick out pieces that you think would look good in the McLellan House.

11. Come to a PMA Picks and hear PMA staff talk about their favorite works of art.

12. Sit on a bench in a gallery and make up stories about the other museum visitors. Who are they? Where are they from? Are they from Maine or visiting from away? Which artwork in that gallery do you think is their favorite?

13. Head up to the third floor to Voice of Design: 25 Years of Architalx. Touch the 17-foot tall tower. What happens? What do you see?

14. Visit the four Stop and Look Stations located through the museum. Each family member can listen to a different audio clip and then summarize it for the others.

15. Look up! Pay attention to the architecture of the PMA. Take the stairs and think about why the architect chose to put the windows and stairs where he did.

16. Go on a safari! Find as many animals in works of art as you can. Split into teams and explore the museum. Did both teams count the same number of animals?

17. Have family members take turns standing in front of paintings and closing their eyes. The other family members can try to describe the painting. Once the family member opens their eyes, you can see how successful you were.

18. Find a painting with a lot going on and make up a story about what is happening. Who are the people in the painting? What are their names? What happened right before this scene? What happened right after?

19. Visit the PMA and then take a walk in the woods. Look at the trees and the flowers like you would look at a painting; notice all of the colors and shapes in nature.

20. Look at the paintings of boats, fishermen, and the ocean in the second floor gallery, then take a walk down to the wharfs. Do the boats look the same as in the painting? What is different?

21. Give your kids each a few dollars to pick out their own treats at the PMA Cafe. Enjoy your snacks while you talk about the artwork you saw that day.

22. Visit the PMA Store. Browse the selection of children’s books and creative games.

23. After your day at the PMA, go home and select objects from your house to create your own museum exhibition.

24. Invite your friends and take them on your own PMA tour.

25. Pick an artist you like and then walk to the Portland Public Library down the street! Look up that artist and read about their life.

*Join Nancy on Saturday, March 30 at 1 p.m. for a Gallery Talk. Free with PMA admission.

March 8 was International Women’s Day and the entire month of March has been designated Women’s History Month—a great time to consider the contributions a few extraordinary women have made to the Portland Museum of Art.

The PMA collection includes many well-known women artist, but it is the philanthropic activities of women behind the scenes that made the PMA what it is today.

Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat
The McLellan House was originally designed and built in 1801 by the local house wright John Kimball Sr. for the merchant sea-man Major Hugh McLellan and his family. If it wasn’t for the third private owners of the house, Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat and her husband Colonel Lorenzo de Medici Sweat, the PMA would not exist as it does today! The McLellan House could have been demolished or converted into condominiums but instead, thanks to the philanthropic activism of Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat, the Portland Museum of Art was born at the corner of Spring and High St.

Margaret and her husband Lorenzo were both Maine natives. They spent winters in Washington D.C., where Lorenzo was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and used the McLellan House as a summer home until they retired. While she was in Washington D.C., Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat became fully engaged in the cultural and intellectual life of the country. She was an author, a literary critic, and a novelist (including the novel, Ethel’s Love Life, a story about the complexities of educated women’s friendships, including friendships characterized as “Boston Marriages.”) Margaret was a world traveler, fluent in five languages, a founding member of the women’s club movement, and involved in the women’s suffragist movement. Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat was also a strong proponent of historic preservation; while in Washington D.C., she championed the historic restoration and preservation of Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate. And Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat was an art patron.

Retiring in Portland, Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat quickly became an ardent patron of the local art scene. She was an early member of the Portland Society of Art (founded 1882), the predecessor to the Portland Museum of Art.

Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat understood the McLellan House was as architectural monument and did little to alter the structure, with the exception of turning the office into a library. This gesture announced her sentiment that entertaining and socializing are not an enterprise separate from the world of the intellect. She strongly believed that art makes for an enriched community, so when she died in 1908, she left her house and her money to the Portland Society of Art. Hugh McLellan had built his house to announce that Portland was part of the civilized world and Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat continued the legacy by leaving her home to enrich the community with art. The PMA stands where it does today because Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat was a philanthropic activist.

Joan Whitney Payson

Joan Whitney Payson was another philanthropic activist who made a significant contribution to the PMA. Joan Whitney was born in 1903 into a family described as a pantheon of strong and creative women. She was 10 years old when she attended the famous 1913 Armory Show in New York City, the show credited with introducing Americans to modern art. (The Whitney family contributed financial backing for this show). Collecting art and opening museums was practically a competitive sport for the rich and famous during Joan’s formative years; the PMA is very fortunate to have benefited from this sport! Joan Whitney cemented her foundation in Maine when she married M. Charles Shipman Payson of Falmouth.

The Joan Whitney Payson Collection came to the PMA in 1991 and included great works that form the core of the European Impressionist collection such as such as Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley.

Elizabeth Noyce and Katherine F. Woodman
At the PMA, you can see Anne and Her Nurse by American painter Mary Cassatt. I consider this work of art a trifecta in my discussion of women’s art and the art of philanthropic activist: a woman artist, donated by a woman philanthropist, in honor of another woman art activist. The Cassatt painting is part of the Elizabeth Noyce Collection.

The Elizabeth Noyce Collection came to the PMA in 1996 and includes 64 works of American art works by Marsden Hartley, Andrew Wyeth, George Bellows, and more. Elizabeth Noyce donated Anne and Her Nurse by Mary Cassatt in honor of Katherine F. Woodman. Katherine F. Woodman was a philanthropist in her own right as she was deeply and personally involved with the transformation of the PMA from a small community art gallery to a major regional museum. Woodman became a philanthropic activist; she showed up, rolled up her sleeves, and was, what I like to call, the “gritty” on a committee. The Precinct Committee, the Century III Campaign, The Committee of One Hundred, and The Board of Trustees have all benefited from Katherine F. Woodman’s art activism. Like Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat, Joan Whitney Payson, and Elizabeth Noyce, Katherine F. Woodman believed art makes for an enriched community.

So, as you wander the PMA galleries, you can engage with art created by talented women like Mary Cassatt, Marguerite Zorach, Isobel Bishop, and Louise Nevelson, but remember it was the creative energy and philanthropic activism of other women that gave these great works of art a wall to hang on!

Image credits: Unknown photographer, Mrs. Margaret Mussey Sweat, nd, black and white photograph mounted on canvas. Museum collection.; Jo Davidson, Joan Whitney Payson, 1933, polychrome terra cotta on marble base. Museum purchase with support from John Whitney Payson.

I was inspired to write the inaugural post of our newest blog series, Why Art Matters (WAM), by a visit to museum’s Youth Art Month (YAM) exhibition. (Plus, WAM and YAM rhyme, and that’s fun.) Over 100 Maine students, from kindergarten through twelfth grade, have their artwork displayed on the PMA’s fourth floor…and it’s incredible.

So why does art matter in school? What do students gain from being exposed to the arts at an early age?

There are a lot of studies and explanations for how art can benefit students; however, the reasoning and rationale doesn’t always have to be scientific to prove meaningful. Students who take art classes, or who are involved in school plays or band, could be influenced in different, positive ways. Not everyone will take an art class and want to grow up to become an artist, but it’s clear that the skills and thought processes explored through the arts can be beneficial down the road.

There are actually a LOT of great things that art can do for students of all ages. Here are just a few of them:

● Students’ exposure to the arts–including drama, music, and dance–often leads to improvement in math, writing, and reading.

● Art education is related to: higher test scores, higher attendance rates, higher graduation rates, and lower disciplinary rates.

● Art education improves students’ abilities to problem-solve and to make decisions–teaching children that problems can have more than one solution
 and that questions can have more than one answer. It also shows children that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

● The arts help build confidence and expose students to other cultures, ideas, and points of view. One of the large lessons in art is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

● Art teaches students to think in ways that aren’t always addressed in other classes like how to observe, innovate, self-reflect, improve, and evaluate.

● Arts integrated curriculum can increase students’ motivation and collaboration, and create a sense of community in the classroom.

Do you have positive memories of art in school?  Do you think that it’s important that the arts be a part of current K-12 curriculum?

If you are looking for more, check out these articles:
“Study: Arts education has academic effect,” by Tamara Henry, USA Today
“Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts, and the Brain: Findings and Challenges for Educators and Researchers from the 2009 Johns Hopkins University Summit” by Mariale Hardiman, Ed.D., Susan Magsamen, Guy McKhann, M.D., and Janet Eilber
“Art for our sake: School arts classes matter more than ever–but not for the reasons you think” by Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland, The Boston Globe
“Renaissance in the Classroom,” Edited by Gail Burnaford, Arnold Aprill, and Cynthia Weiss, Harvard Business Review

Tell us a bit about yourself and your history with museum work. Can you talk about your connection to Maine? What do you love about Portland?
Although I grew up in Connecticut, I have always had a deep connection to Maine, where most of my family has its roots. As a child I ran around Scarborough Beach, in high school I spent summers working at a coastal resort, and was finally able to spend the full year in Maine when I attended Bowdoin College. When I left in 1999, I promised myself I would come back.

Liz, as a child, with her mother and sister on Scarborough Beach.

I went to college pre-med and took one art history class and it changed everything. As a child I was often exposed to museums and always enjoyed them, but it didn’t all come together until I sat in that dark classroom looking at slides, realizing I wanted to know more. In college I studied abroad in Florence and interned at PMA. From that point on, I was sure I would always work in museums and I that I wanted to come back to PMA someday!

After temping in the marketing department at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, I moved into a fundraising position. It was clear that the development department was a place where I interacted the most with all aspects of a museum–curators, educators, designers, members, and visitors. I feel I can share my passion about art with others and work to bring people closer to the museum and its mission. I can strengthen the foundation of an institution by engaging people that want to be involved and make a difference, all while continuing my own learning.

To me, Portland is a perfect combination of big city and small town. It has the culture, restaurants, and opportunities of a big city, but the charm, friendliness, and community feeling of a small town. I love the lifestyle available in Portland and its proximity to both the ocean and the mountains!

What are you most looking forward to in your move to Maine and your new PMA role?
In my time away from Maine I have looked for every excuse to return, whether for a week or a weekend. I am most excited to call Maine home again and to be involved Portland’s community. It is such a vibrant cultural capital for the state of Maine and I am looking forward to doing my part to continue its sustainability and growth. I am looking forward to getting to know PMA better and the wonderful people that have aided in its amazing advancement.

In 1998, you worked at the PMA as the Biennial Intern. What type of art are you most interested in?
I have always been interested in photography and am amazed to watch as it advances with technology. I also really enjoy contemporary art and the opportunity to see what artists are influenced by today and how that impacts their work. I like experiencing anything sincere that teaches me or helps me to see the world in a different way.

What challenges do you see facing the PMA? What do you hope to accomplish here?
I think that PMA will face the same challenges that many cultural institutions and non-profit organizations do in this day and age. The economy continues to be challenging and there is always the constant need to attract new donors and visitors while continuing to engage our current supporters. I look forward to approaching these challenges in new and creative ways that will help PMA continue to grow into the future.

I am most looking forward to continuing the remarkable momentum the museum has seen lately after the successful conclusion of the Winslow Homer Studio campaign. It is an amazing institution with talented and dedicated staff. I am truly looking forward to joining the team.

Join us for the opening of PMA Family Space: Design Lab, on February 19–a perfect activity for your family during February school vacation! The PMA Family Space is an interactive room in the McLellan House dedicated to families exploring, creating, and most importantly, having fun! This year, as part of The Artist + Family Project, we are inviting artists from the community to interpret the museum’s collections in new ways and to construct family-friendly activities for the PMA Family Space.

The first artist to transform the space is local architect/designer Kyo Bannai. Inspired by the context of the McLellan House, Kyo incorporated elements of architectural design for families with children of all ages to enter in and become designers!

Give us a bit of background about yourself in the world of architecture, your influences, etc.
Although both my parents are designers, architects, and developers, I didn’t quite understand why one would become a designer—I guess I could attribute it to nearsightedness. It was always around and pervasive. For a while I was too busy learning about cadavers! It didn’t occur to me until decades later that everything inside a body was designed just so. And now, I see how everything around us is designed. The paper clip or the pencil on your desk was designed for utility. The teacher’s lesson was designed to convey a certain idea. Even the giraffe’s neck is designed for survival.

Describe the Design Lab concept.
A primary guideline was to interpret the museum’s collections in new ways. Being an architect it made sense for me to think about the PMA’s unique and impressive collection of buildings that make up the main part of the museum: the McLellan House (built in 1801), the Sweat Galleries (opened in 1911), and the Payson Building (opened in 1983.) Over its course of history these additions, renovations, and restorations contributed to physical, functional, and emotive changes inside and out. So, my concept started with the statement: “The museum is constantly changing… and every change alters its surroundings.”

The asking of the questions and the invitation to respond is the premise. What does this look like in the experience you’ve created for the Design Lab?
Recently my husband and I took our kids to the International Spy Museum while in Washington D.C. We loved the way we were given an alias upon arrival and instructed to be that person on the card and go through “spy training.” How fun is that? Pretending to be a designer is obviously not quite as sexy, but this was the idea I was aiming to emulate.

Upon arrival you can pick up a Design Lab Workbook at the Admissions Desk to experience the designer’s process through exploration of museum “hot spots,” sites where you’ll sketch your observations, then return to the Design Lab to share what you saw. Everyone has the choice to build their ideas and to post them onto the charrette wall. It’s a bit like online social media, isn’t it?

To further the community idea building, a special bonus will take place on a Free Friday evening event when family ideas will be compiled and presented. It’ll be a collaboration with many people participating in a visionary process! How thrilling, especially for the young ones, to see their ideas become a part of an installation at the Portland Museum of Art?

School vacation week is the perfect time for families to discover new adventures in their own backyard. From Neo-Classicial sculptures to Impressionist paintings of Europe, let the PMA take your family on a worldly tour—all without leaving the museum!

Family Voices Cell Phone Tour
To get the most out of your family’s visit, make sure you have your cellphone with you! With a quick call, you and your child can listen to audio tours of other children with their parents discussing works in the museum’s collection. Designed to encourage you and your family into the conversation. Bring art to life and dial in some fun!

Stop and Look Stations
Stop and Look Stations, encourage your child to take the lead! Located throughout the galleries, each station is equipped with audio iPods, cards with questions and facts about artwork, and interactive learning tools. Families with children of all ages will experience an array of perspectives for a variety of learning styles. Enjoy a take-away card to continue the conversation at home.

PMA Family Space
This brand new activity room is located in the Federal-era McLellan House. Throughout the year, different artists will curate new, artful activities for you family in the space. Draw a family portrait or sit at the writing desk and share your museum experience. Look at art, read, draw, and play together!

PMA Café
A clean plate is the best kind of happy meal! We’ve added new, kid-friendly items to our menu for a delicious break from your museum visit. Peanut butter and jelly, ham and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs, and macaroni and cheese are great options for lunch, while we also have apples with peanut butter, Stonyfield yogurt, and Aurora Provision’s snack mix for a lighter treat. Questions about the menu or an item you’d like to see? Ask our staff, we’re happy to help however we can!

Recently, we received an email from a patron who noticed something incredible about a work in our collection. The painting, titled John Calvin Stevens (1855-1940) by Portland native Claude Montgomery, is a portrait of the Maine artist and architect and is currently on view in our exhibition The Portland Society of Art and Winslow Homer’s Legacy in Maine. In the portrait, John Calvin Stevens is shown seated in an elegant interior decorated with a small landscape painting in the background to the left of the mantel. This painting-within-a-painting was originally assumed to represent a work by Stevens based on his involvement with the Portland-based painting group The Brush’uns and his dedication to the city’s artistic life.

Now, thanks to the keen eye of a visitor, we realize that this landscape image is not of a painting by John Calvin Stevens but, rather, is the iconic painting The Artist’s Studio in an Afternoon Fog by Winslow Homer. Homer’s composition is recognizable by the dark shapes, the glistening of light off of the water, and the halo around the sun—definitive characteristics apparent in the landscape near the mantel.

In 1901, Homer gave The Artist’s Studio in an Afternoon Fog to Stevens who asked for “any production of Winslow Homer” as payment for architectural plans he had drawn for Kettle Cove, a cottage at Prouts Neck that Homer used as a summer rental property. (Stevens had also worked on Homer’s studio in 1884 and 1890.) In a letter to Stevens that accompanied the painting, Homer noted, “I am very much surprised and pleased at your bill. This kind of thing occurs seldom in matters of business . . . I can greet you as a brother artist and thank you sincerely. I send you this sketch of mine that I think is appropriate and will please you.”1

1 Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. and William David Barry, “Brother Artists,” Bowdoin, Fall 1988: 18.

Image credits: (Top to bottom) Claude Montgomery, “John Calvin Stevens (1855-1940),” 1935, oil on canvas, 40 x 32 1/2 inches. Gift of the artist.; Winslow Homer, “The Artist’s Studio in an Afternoon Fog,” 1894, oil on canvas, 24 x 30 1/4 inches. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester; R.T. Miller Fund.

American painter Lois Dodd began her career in New York during the postwar art scene and was the only female founding member of Tanager Gallery, one of the 10th Street Cooperatives. During the summers, Dodd migrated to mid-coast Maine along with her many of contemporaries, including Alex Katz and Neil Welliver, to create work inspired by the rich character and natural beauty of the region.

Lois Dodd’s first museum retrospective, Lois Dodd: Catching the Light, will be on view at the PMA from January 17 through April 7.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Visit soon, visit often. See you at the PMA!

Mark H.C. Bessire
Director

Lois Dodd: Catching the Light
On view January 17—April 7
To kick off 2013, the PMA is hosting an exhibition highlighting the career of American plein-air painter, Lois Dodd. The exhibition will include images of the places that were most important to her—views of New York City’s Lower East Side from her apartment windows and the woods and gardens of Midcoast Maine.

Alex Katz stated, “Lois is one serious painter.” We couldn’t agree more and hope you join us to celebrate the first career museum retrospective for one of Maine’s most beloved painters.

Voices of Design: 25 Years of Architalx
On view February 2—May 19
Voices of Design will celebrate 25 years of Portland’s Architalx lecture series and showcase the power of design through an interactive exhibition featuring work of some of the world’s leading architects and designers.

Blueberry Rakers: Photographs by David Brooks Stess
On view April 6—May 19
David Brooks Stess has spent two decades photographing and participating in the annual blueberry harvest in northern Maine. Brooks brings the physical aspect and hard realities of the manual labor required for the harvest, to light while also focusing on the relationships and social life in workers’ camps on the edge of the fields.

The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism
On view May 2—September 8
This summer the work of timeless masters Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, and Paul Gauguin, among others, will be on view at the PMA from the renowned William S. Paley Collection at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. We are excited to be the only New England stop for the collection’s 2012-2014 North American tour.

Ahmed Alsoudani: Redacted
On view September 7—December 8
Iraq-born American artist Ahmed Alsoudani’s contemporary works of anguished abstraction approach themes of violence, survival, and history from every angle. We are grateful to have Alsoudani, an alumni of Maine College of Art, back in Maine for a powerful exhibition of the artist’s recent pieces.

Winslow Homer’s Civil War
On view September 7—December 8
This exhibition will draw from the PMA’s own collection of Winslow Homer’s wood-engravings that depict images of the Civil War the artist produced for Harper’s Weekly. The pieces showcase Homer’s unique vision of modern warfare and keen eye for social commentary.

2013 Portland Museum of Art Biennial
On view September 26—January 5
We are thrilled, once again, to celebrate the eighth Portland Museum of Art Biennial. The juried exhibition not only features entries from artists who have a meaningful connection to our state, but also will be juried by our new Curator of Contemporary and Modern Art, Jessica May.