The furor surrounding the Portland Museum of Art’s handling of 142 Free St., which it wants to tear down – and with it the city’s historic preservation ordinance – is an unforced error and speaks volumes about the nature of the world of art museums today.

The building began life in 1830 as the Free Street Theater. When that failed, it became the Free Street Baptist Church, which it remained for 90 years, until the Chamber of Commerce purchased it. John Calvin Stevens and his son John Howard Stevens were hired to design its conversion from church to office building.

In 1991, the building passed to the Children’s Museum of Portland, which occupied the space until 2021, two years after the neighboring PMA purchased the building.

In the meantime, the wholesale destruction of historically significant buildings across Portland in the 1960s had spurred the creation of the Spring Street National Register Historic District in 1970, passage of Portland’s historic preservation ordinance in 1990 and creation of the Congress Street Local Historic District in 2009.

The building at 142 Free St. is considered a “contributing structure” of both historic districts, a fact of which the Portland Museum of Art was well aware when it bought the building.

The PMA then launched an international competition for a “campus expansion and unification project” that obviously did not require keeping 142 Free St. as part of the design parameters. According to the winning designers, “The PMA’s competition brief was a challenge to the very definition of what a museum is.”

That’s for sure, though not in a way that does any credit to the museum’s leadership.

The International Council of Museums defines a museum as an institution that “collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage … foster[s] sustainability [and] operate[s] and communicate[s] ethically.”

Having acquired the very tangible heritage of the former theater, church, chamber of commerce and children’s museum, the PMA’s first instinct was not to conserve, interpret or exhibit the building, but to level it.

In so doing, it trashed the idea of sustainability. As Carl Elefante, former president of the American Institute of Architects, wrote: “The greenest building is the one that is already built. Buildings represent enormous investments in energy, material, and financial resources and yet thousands of viable buildings are destroyed every year in the name of progress.”

Far from communicating ethically, the leadership of the PMA issued a competition brief that didn’t so much challenge as ignore the definition of what a museum is.

The museum leadership can hide behind the City Council’s vote to override the city’s historic preservation ordinance as validating its underhanded approach to getting rid of something that was simply in the way of their grandiose plans.

But at what cost to the integrity of the city planning board and to historic preservation in Portland? One can only imagine the glee with which property developers with far less concern for reputational damage than the PMA should have greeted this unprecedented decision.

The depressing irony is the fact that, of the five wildly different institutions that have occupied 142 Free St. over the past 194 years, it was only a 21st-century art museum that found itself so creatively bankrupt that it was unable to incorporate an historic property into its plans for the future.

Many, if not most, art museums are run with sensitivity and thrift, yet the public views the art world as one dominated by elite monied interests. This is hardly surprising given that the most visible art museum leaders are more invested in their own Ozymandian legacies – Behold! I was a museum executive! – than to the needs of their employees, docents, artists, students and visitors.

When institutions like the PMA engage in such disreputable end runs as they have in their handling of 142 Free St., they rend the fabric of their own communities, as many have observed. But they also increase the challenges faced by art museums with more principled administrators.

The City Council’s vote to bypass the historic preservation ordinance is being challenged in court. But the council could do much to restore its reputation, and that of the Portland Museum of Art, by reversing its decision.