Portland Museum of Art launches competition to select architect for expansion — Portland Museum of Art

The Portland Museum of Artwork has introduced an global design competitors to select an architectural business to oversee a major expansion of its downtown campus.

The museum introduced options in February to commence elevating $85 million toward the undertaking, which is very likely to include things like construction of a six- or 7-tale, 60,000-sq.-foot setting up on the site of the former Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine, as very well as some renovations to current structures.

“We are fired up to invite professionals from close to the entire world to internalize the goals of the PMA Blueprint and transform them into physical spaces that provide them to everyday living,” museum director Mark Bessire claimed in a statement. “This is no quick endeavor, as our communities have built their anticipations crystal clear for open up and ground breaking spaces that help a flexible range of applications, exhibitions, and art.”

The project’s completion is still 4 a long time away, but Wednesday’s announcement is a major move. The museum is performing with a New York consulting company, Dovetail Structure Strategists, to pick an architect. Firms have until July 1 to post curiosity. From there, the museum will select up to 4 companies to produce a concept design and style for the challenge, which will be because of in November and will be displayed publicly. A winning workforce will be chosen in December.

Museum officers and board users have envisioned a developing that, in addition to extra than doubling the exhibition area, would be instantaneously recognizable on the Portland skyline, with a rooftop restaurant and sculpture park.

“The one of a kind competitors we have built lets for the electrical power of architecture and the opportunity of concepts to collide, producing a platform that will captivate the extremely finest, varied experts and will in the long run transform the PMA’s vision into a constructed truth,” Dovetail Design and style Strategists President Susanna Sirefman said in a assertion.

The museum has been arranging for an growth for quite a few a long time, but people programs accelerated with the 2018 order of the building at 142 No cost St., which formerly housed the Children’s Museum.

The new building would be crafted on that internet site and would include things like a ground floor with no cost artwork galleries, school rooms and local community place, and room on the remaining flooring for an auditorium, traveling exhibitions, offices, an all-ages “makers space” and a images heart.

The museum’s campus also features 4 other buildings: the McLellan Household, the Sweat Memorial Galleries, the Clapp Residence and the Payson Creating, whose signature arches confront the intersection of Congress and Higher streets.

Museum officials job the addition will permit Portland to accommodate in between 300,000 and 500,000 guests just about every 12 months to perspective a collection that incorporates impressionist masters like Monet and Renoir, Maine icons Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth, among other folks, and extra modern day names like combined-media artist David Driskell and photographer Nan Goldin.

The challenge also coincides with an ongoing overhaul of Congress Sq., a person of the city’s busiest places, that involves a redesign of the intersection and of the park that sits specifically throughout from the museum.