After reading Daniel O’Leary’s commonsense and fiscally discerning April 26 op-ed (“Portland Museum of Art appears to have lost its way”), I read a New York Times review headlined “Splendid Visions Overshadow Moral Undertones” about the Broadway musical “The Great Gatsby.” While it might be a literary stretch, O’Leary’s prescient words not only reminded me of Hamlet’s “primrose path of dalliance” but also metaphorically echoed the blurb accompanying the Gatsby review: “The musical adaptation of a Jazz Age classic seems more interested in the era’s frivolity than in the story’s tragedy.”

As someone who sits on the board of directors at a local historical society, I share O’Leary’s emphasis on historic preservation. Could razing 142 Free St. be the symptom of a younger generation’s knee-jerk notion that progress necessarily warrants change? Change is a constant, but some change can be destructively and financially foolhardy. The PMA has closed off the second-floor reading room in the McLellan-Sweat House, a measure imposed, I gather, due to budgetary constraints; yet the PMA can allegedly afford an immensely superfluous glass house. I would rather sit on the second floor of the McLellan-Sweat House than witness the mutilation of Portland’s historic architectural landscape to make way for a frivolous ersatz crystal palace.

Albert Black
Ogunquit

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