Libby Building News Today

I would encourage the city of Portland to approve the Portland Museum of Art’s proposal for its addition, including the demolition of the former Chamber of Commerce building. I love historic architecture. I spent childhood summers in a John Calvin Stevens cottage. But I also worked for architects for 40 years and I understand that […]

The Portland Museum of Art is behaving dangerously like a large multi-national corporation with shareholders in its disregard for local ordinances. And it appears to be taking lessons in strategy from certain political quarters with the outlandish claim that 142 Free St. is an emblem of Jim Crow because of its Greek Revival faςade’s makeover, […]

The analysis of the flaws in the Portland Museum of Art’s expansion plan provided by David Chase (“PMA plan shows contempt for history, context, local ordinances,” Jan. 18) is excellent, but a broader context for the plan’s problems requires looking further back in time to the construction of the existing Payson Building, the first expansion […]

Re: “Maine Voices: Portland Museum of Art’s new wing must not make old mistakes” (Dec. 7, Page A4): The recent photos of the Portland Museum of Art and the Libby Building brought back some wonderful memories. In the 1950s and ’60s I was fortunate enough to visit renowned piano teacher Ocy Downs’ studio on one […]

Not everybody regularly gets inside the museum; how it looks from the outside matters.