There’s certainly an argument to be made that the timing of a “new acquisitions” show at the Portland Museum of Art, “+ collection” (through April 28), might be a bit tone deaf. The PMA is trying to raise tens of millions of dollars for a new unifying museum design but is under fire for wanting to tear down the old Children’s Museum to do it. Thirteen employees of about 100 were just laid off, and the museum’s director is taking a 20-percent pay cut on his base salary.

A display of new holdings sends the impression that there is not only no financial strain on the PMA, but that everything’s just peachy, thank you very much. Wasn’t anyone concerned that the institution’s detractors might see it that way, scratch their heads and mumble (to paraphrase Hamlet) “something is rotten in the city of Portland”? Scarcely what we might call suave politesse.

Which is why it’s useful to point out up front that only a handful of works (I counted only nine) out of the approximately 90 paintings, sculptures and objects on view were actual purchases. The rest are gifts, promised gifts or bequests. And the variety of the acquisitions certainly makes a good argument for the need for more space to display the 19,000 artworks in the PMA collection.

For instance, I knew the museum already owned a significant glass collection, so it was not exactly surprising to see more additions by Émile Gallé, Steuben, Pairpoint and Tiffany Studios. But who knew the PMA was seriously collecting design objects other than glass, such as the Tom Loeser “Chest of Drawers” from the 1990s studio furniture craft movement? Is furniture an important category within the collection (or intended to be)? If so, then why have we not seen much of it over the years?

There are a lot of stunners here to be sure. One greets us just inside the gallery to the left: “Thematic Repeat,” a dynamic 1976 painting by Lynne Drexler. It is a tour de force of rigorous brush work and rhythmic composition. You can almost feel its dense musicality striving to break free of the confines of the frame.

It’s paired with a serene wall sculpture by Matt Browning that at first feels like a complete counterpoint to the Drexler painting. The explanatory label here is unfortunately not very informative (a complaint I have about several works on view, especially when their title, like this one, is in fact “Untitled” and the artist – not Browning, but others – is not well known). What looks like a cool geometric abstraction reminiscent of Sol LeWitt is actually a cage-like work that was hand-carved from a single block of Alaskan yellow cedar(!).

The sculpture was shown in 2017 at the Whitney Biennial with three other equally meticulous companion pieces. To understand that minimalist geometric work similar to LeWitt – or Donald Judd for that matter – can be so beautifully handcrafted creates an interesting tension we don’t get if we don’t know Browning carved it, let alone from a single block of wood, to appear as if assembled from separate dowels, which is why one cannot locate a single seam on the piece. The rigor of the Drexler, suddenly, feels just as present, if more quietly and subtly, in Browning’s work.

On the opposite wall is an extraordinary Kiki Smith lithograph made using the artist’s own hair and a Cher-like wig. The incorporation of her own hair touches upon the gender, body and sexuality issues for which this artist is well known. Yet even without comprehending this, its intense, complex tangle of lines is a marvel to get lost in.

Next to Smith is another lithograph called “Extraña Satisfacción” by José Bedia Valdés, a Cuban artist known for being inspired by various African diasporic religions, including Abakuá (Nigeria/Cameroon), La Regla Kongo and Regla de Ocha (also known as santería). This might explain the half-man-half-insect figures populating the piece, as well as, perhaps, the strange satisfaction of the title if what the main figure is drinking and smoking has ritualistic significance. But, again, the label provides no interpretation or scholarship.

Conversely, a helpful label ramps up the power of Steve Locke’s “Homage to the Auction Block #92-sacrifice.” Intentionally referencing Josef Albers’ square-within-a-square paintings, it is instead, we discover, the minimalist aerial view of a slave auction block (in red, on a blue ground). There’s something about how Locke mimics Albers’ slightly detached Caucasian intellectual artistic pursuit (his endless squares) to tell a story of human commerce and its attendant wounds of violence, loss and mistreatment that can shake you to your core.

One of the most spectacular new works is by Swiss artist Pia Fries. Her piece “lochtrop” is massive (78 3/4 by 102 3/8 inches) and employs both silkscreen printing and built-up encrustations of paint. The more one looks at this work, the more absorbed we become in the interplay between what appear like some kind of birds’ nests that Fries has thickly painted and a silkscreened image – one could say a facsimile or “memory” – of the same thing. There’s a way this contrast between reproduction and actual manifestation in paint viscerally amplifies the thrill of paint; it becomes an exceedingly sensual presence on the surface. You almost want to lick it.

There could hardly be more dissimilarity between “lochtrop” and Paulina Peavy’s “Untitled (Smokies Series).” Whereas Fries’ work celebrates the corporal qualities of her medium, Peavy’s – made by manipulating a glossy paper covered in clay medium over a flame – summons something far more ethereal and evanescent.

That’s because Peavy, who immersed herself in spiritualism after she started attending weekly séances in the 1930s, claimed to be a kind of vessel for her spirit guide, “Lacamo,” who held that humans were transitioning to “one-gender perfection.” That’s a fascinating viewpoint to have emerged many decades before transgender and non-binary awareness ever came to prominence, even if it probably more accurately describes a general mystical belief that the self as we know it is not real, but a human construct that denies that, fundamentally, we are all essentially the same thing, made of the same medium. In that realization, distinctions of any kind, including gender, become irrelevant.

There are many more jewels here: Passamaquoddy baskets (three of seven actual purchases), a mini-display of wonderful German Expressionist prints, some lovely Marsden Hartley works (particularly “Trixie,” a more Cubist painting than many of Hartley’s pieces), a work by Albert Oehlen (again, with no documentation – strange for such an important contemporary artist) and a touching trio of highly personal gelatin silver prints by Cheryle St. Onge of her mother in years of mental decline.

It is also nice to see the trend toward diversification in acquisitions, including work by Black, brown, Indigenous and Asian artists: the Passamaquoddy baskets and the Locke, a lithograph by Hung Liu, a mixed media work by Suchitra Mattai, an inkjet and silkscreen on paper by Derrick Adams, a large and very moving work by Kyoko Idetsu, “Kinfolk” by Sissòn (also sans background of any kind) and, of course, pieces by Ashley Bryan and David Driskell.

I’m not sure why the wall labels feel so inconsistent in their informational content. One mission of museums is to educate people about art. This is the second show in a row that doesn’t seem to do that well (“Fragments of Epic Memory” recently suffered from this, with a paucity of information about the Canadian photo collection accompanying the contemporary works).

Even a simple Google search would turn up helpful ideas that might offer viewers another way into works like those by Browning, Oehlen, Sissòn and others. It also might have given the PMA’s detractors a lot less ammo to aim at the museum; a good thing when the museum seems to be in the unenviable position of facing a public firing squad. Just sayin’.

Jorge S. Arango has written about art, design and architecture for over 35 years. He lives in Portland. He can be reached at: jorge@jsarango.com 

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