Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

July 30, 2012

For Maine artists, a lasting legacy

For many artists with ties to Maine, the preservation of their life's work presents an ongoing challenge, 'a work in progress' – not unlike art itself.

By Bob Keyes bkeyes@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

When Will Barnet's mother died, he lacked a proper way to grieve. He was not a particularly religious man, so finding solace in a church was not an option.

Instead, Barnet wandered over to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, sat alone in the galleries and immersed himself in the glistening oils of the Old Masters, particularly Rembrandt's paintings of women.

Quietly alone, Barnet found the comfort he desperately sought, and began processing his grief.

"I spent the entire day at the museum," the artist recalled in an interview at his summer home at Phippsburg. "I thought to myself, 'How wonderful it is that 400 years later, Rembrandt's work is still here. I should be so lucky to have such a lasting legacy.' "

Barnet, who is now 101 and a recipient of the National Medal of Arts by President Obama, has begun articulating a plan to ensure his own legacy. With input from his wife and family, and consultations with lawyers and accountants, the artist has formed a foundation that will govern the paintings, drawings, prints and other materials most important to him.

He has also identified "roughly a couple dozen" key paintings that he hopes will "go to good museums and good collections to survive over the decades."

Barnet is among a large group of aging artists with ties to Maine who are working through the difficult, complicated and often emotional process of coming to terms with their own mortality while making decisions about the survival and dissemination of their work after their deaths.

Maine is home to dozens of influential American artists with important international, national and regional stature, from Beverly Hallam in York to Robert Indiana on Vinalhaven to Richard Estes in Northeast Harbor -- and dozens more along the coast, up north and in the hills of western Maine.

Because of Maine's lure as an inspirational place for creating art, as well as a progressive law that makes it favorable to donate work to state museums in lieu of paying inheritance taxes, many artists come here to work in their prime, and some live out the balance of their lives in the state.

The decisions they make about their work, their estates and their legacies will have a large impact on the quality and depth of the collections of Maine museums for generations to come, as well as artist-in-residence opportunities for young and emerging artists.

In essence, the future of their estates is intertwined with Maine's future as an artistic and cultural destination.

MAINE LEGACIES EXPAND, EVOLVE

Many artists in their 70s, 80s and 90s -- or in Barnet's case, as centenarians -- face wrenching decisions about where to leave their work, how their homes may be used and how they want to be remembered.

Several important Barnet images already are in the collections of Maine museums, including the silksceen print "Persephone" from 1982 at the Portland Museum of Art. Whether more of his work ends up in Maine remains to be seen. The family has not disclosed details of his wishes, which are evolving.

Examples abound of artists whose Maine legacies have expanded after their deaths. The painter Stephen Pace worked out an arrangement with Maine College of Art to use his home and studio in Stonington as a residency program, and created a gallery in his name with a large collection of work at Fryeburg Academy.

When painter Robert LaHotan died in 2002, he left the property on Great Cranberry Island that he shared with his partner and painter John Heliker. The Heliker-LaHotan Foundation has operated a residency program for seven seasons, providing retreats for 20 visual artists, poets and musicians.

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