Lots of interesting art stories cross my desk. Some relate to Maine, including this one about Jerilea Zempel.

As the story articulates, she was displeased with her recent experience crossing the border at Houlton.

The list of openings for museum directors in Maine keeps getting longer.

The Ogunquit Museum of American Art announced on Monday that executive director and curator Michael Culver is leaving the museum.

In a letter to the museum staff and docents, Michael Kenslea, president of the board of directors, said, "After 25 years of service to the museum, we will certainly miss Michael. Looking ahead we have new challenges and opportunities and we hope that you will all be part of an exciting future for the museum."

The museum is closed for the season, and will reopen in spring 2009. Culver couldn't be reached on Monday morning for a comment.

Copyright 2008 Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The Portland Museum of Art will receive a gift of 50 works of art from New York collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, with the help of the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The gifts are part of a national gifts program, the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States.

The program will distribute 2,500 works from the Vogels' collection of contemporary art throughout the nation, with 50 works going to an art institution in each of the 50 states.

Artists whose work is donated to the Portland Museum of Art include Will Barnet, Charles Clough, Rackstraw Downes, Steve Keister and Richard Tuttle.

"Dorothy and Herbert Vogel gathered an extraordinary collection of contemporary art, and their gift to the nation is a model of philanthropy," Portland Museum of Art acting director Thomas Denenberg said in a press release.

The best-known works in the Vogel Collection are examples of minimal and conceptual art, but they also include pieces of a figurative and expressionist nature. Primarily a collection of drawings, the 2,500 works the Vogels are donating also include paintings, sculptures, photographs and prints by more than 170 contemporary artists mainly working in the United States.

The National Endowment for the Arts is funding the publication of a book, "The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States," scheduled for release this month.

The Vogel Collection has been characterized as unique among collections of contemporary art, both for the character and breadth of the objects and for the individuals who created it.

Herbert Vogel spent most of his working life as an employee of the United States Postal Service, and Dorothy Vogel was a reference librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library. The Vogels began collecting in the early 1960s, setting their collecting priorities above those of personal comfort.

With the exception of the collection formed by their friend, artist Sol LeWitt, no other known private collection of similar work in Europe or America rivals the range, complexity and quality of the art the Vogels acquired.

Michael K. Komanecky, chief curator of the Farnsworth Art Museum, will serve as interim director beginning Dec. 1, as the museum's board begins a search for a replacement for Lora Urbanelli.

Urbanelli, the museum's director for less than two years, announced last week that she was leaving for a position with a museum in New Jersey.

"The board saw no reason to reach beyond the museum's extraordinarily talented senior staff team for this assignment, and we are delighted that Michael has accepted the position," board president Richard Aroneau said in a press release.

"With such a great exhibition schedule already in place for 2009, including a major Robert Indiana retrospective and Maine's first look at Jamie Wyeth's critically acclaimed series 'Seven Deadly Sins,' we are confidant that Michael will provide the museum with a seamless transition period while the board conducts a careful and thorough search for a new director."

Komanecky has been chief curator since June 2007. He has served as chief curator for the Phoenix Art Museum; deputy director for Collections and Public Programs for the Dayton Art Institute; curator for the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester, N.H.; and director of the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington.

File this one under the category of surprise: Lora Urbanelli is leaving her position as executive director at the Farsnworth Art Museum and taking over as director of the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, N.J., starting in January.

Urbanelli has served as executive director at the Farnsworth since January 2006. She will continue in that role until the end of December.

"This is a personal career decision for Lora, and we are excited for her," Farnsworth board president Richard Aroneau said in a press release. "Although we are sad to see her go, we are grateful that she leaves behind a highly professional and united senior management team that has the strength and skill to guide the museum through a transition period while the board conducts a careful and thorough search for a new director."

In a statement, Urbanelli said, "It has been a true honor and a pleasure to work with this talented group of individuals in such a vibrant and beautiful area of the world. Midcoast Maine is unique, and the Farnsworth Art Museum is so well loved by its neighbors and members. Our place in the hearts of this community is the envy of many of my museum colleagues. I know my departure will surprise a lot of people - it surprised me too - but we are well-positioned with strong leadership on the staff, and our friends will find that our internal transition will be seamless. Moreover, our exhibition and education programs will be very impressive next year."

Portland's largest art auction begins at 6 p.m. Friday at Holiday Inn by the Bay, with a watercolor of a hunting scene by British artist Sir Alfred Munnings estimated to sell for between $400,000 and $600,000.

The annual Barridoff Galleries auction of American and European art also includes an oil by John Leslie Breck that gallery co-owner Annette Elowitch believes may be based on a view from the stern of Claude Monet's boat. That painting, "The River Epte, Giverny," is estimated to go for between $200,000 and $300,000, Elowitch said.

Elowitch said Barridoff assembled items for this year's auction mindful of the sluggish economy, "turning anything down that was mediocre" and stocking the sale with paintings that are all mostly new to the market.

Some examples of that include two middle-period oils by Marguerite Zorach, both untouched until recently when they were cleaned. They came from a West Coast branch of the Zorach family, and are "totally unknown," Elowitch said.

The auction opens with previews from 5 to 8 p.m.Thursday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday.

The University of Maine Museum of Art has hired George Kinghorn as its new director.

Kinghorn, who most recently served as deputy director and chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville in Florida, begins his new post June 9.

“The museum in downtown Bangor is a beautifully designed, intimate space. I’m very excited about the opportunity there,” Kinghorn said by phone from Florida. “I am interested in this position largely because of my background is education. I taught visual arts at the university level, and the opportunity to once again be associated with a university and a campus and able to interact with students is particularly appealing.”

Kinghorn, 40, said he was looking forward to living in a northern climate. Although he was born in Florida, he has lived in Michigan and in Minnesota.

“I’m an outdoorsy type person. The personal opportunity of being able to go out in nature and do a little kayaking and canoeing is going to be a nice change from the Florida environment, where it is so ridiculously hot,” he said.

Kinghorn was instrumental in opening MOCA Jacksonville’s six-floor, 60,000-square-foot facility. He also led a subsequent renovation of the museum’s galleries.

During his nine-year tenure, MOCA Jacksonville opened a children’s interactive center, ArtExplorium Loft, and Café Nola, an upscale bistro. In addition, he added significant works to the permanent collection, implemented a comprehensive strategic plan and created a collections management master plan, which redefined the scope of the collection.

Laurie Hicks, the interim director of the University of Maine Museum of Art and an art professor at UMaine, praised Kinghorn’s experience, enthusiasm and vision.

“The museum is a vital, alive place,” Hicks said in a statement. “What George can bring to it is the ability to make that vitality and possibility a reality. He has a great track record of having a vision and making it happen, and that was important to us.”

Kinghorn said his vision for the museum includes community outreach and collaborations with faculty and students, and he hopes to increase the museum’s visibility statewide.

He believes the museum can play a larger role in Bangor’s evolution as a cultural destination, and that with his expertise in contemporary art, the museum can become a central gathering spot for Maine’s contemporary art scene.

Kinghorn’s arrival in Maine coincides with the fifth anniversary of the museum’s move to downtown Bangor.

While the Bangor museum is much smaller than MOCA Jacksonville, its size lends itself to an intimate experience for visitors. “It has great flexibility. We can do three to four very different types of exhibitions simultaneously to really provide things that appeal to the tastes of a wide audience,” he said.

Kinghorn succeeds longtime director Wally Mason, who led the museum’s move off campus. During his time at UMaine from 1996 to late 2007, Mason significantly added to the permanent collection of works on paper, building on the tradition set by the museum’s founder, Vincent Hartgen.

“Wally Mason really built the foundation for this museum,” Hicks said. “Now it’s time for the museum to set a path for itself and work to become the museum it has the potential to be, to really try to do things that make it stand out even more than it already does.”

At Round Top Farm in Damariscotta on Saturday, friends celebrated the life and all-around good spirit of longtime arts supporter Jody McCorkle of Brunswick.

McCorkle, one of Maine's most honest and ardent arts patrons -- and a fairly accomplished artist herself -- passed away over the winter. Saturday's reception, arranged by McCorkle's dear friend Nancy Freeman, was meant simply to bring a few friends together to celebrate McCorkle's life and her art. Her paintings hung on the walls alongside those of some of her artist friends, giving folks a chance to reflect on her life and goodwill.

The family plans a formal memorial this summer.

"I miss her every day," Freeman said on Saturday.

I didn't know McCorkle well, but knew her well enough to know that she was a bright light in the Maine arts scene -- and an impeccable judge of talent. Soon after I started writing about the arts in summer 2002, McCorkle became a sounding board. Whenever I was unsure of a story idea, I would seek McCorkle's counsel. If she liked the artist, I usually did the story. If not, the story didn't get written.

Freeman is absolutely right. McCorkle is sadly missed day in and day out, but the good will and cheer ring true.

BATH — The newly installed Charlie Goodhue exhibition at the Chocolate Church in Bath, “His Studio Revisited," is worth a look.

It's a nice show, with several appealing images, including this oil painting "Autumn Range Farm."

Goodhue, who died in 2005 and worked in the midcoast, worked freely in multiple media: watercolors and oils primarily, but also a technique called “vitreous flux,” which involved the application of watercolor paint to a Marlite board or other impermeable surface, causing the paint to spread in a way that challenges the artist to retain balance between freedom and control.

Goodhue embellished on the technique by adding volcanic ash to bring greater texture and depth to his paintings.

Some of his paintings are highly realistic, others abstract. Clearly, he was comfortable moving back and forth among many styles.

Many of the paintings in the Bath show are of area locales, Five Islands in particular.

The show will remain on view through May 31.

The toll of our bad economy is beginning to show up in tangible ways. Suzanne Gagnon, who operates the Cooper Jackson Gallery at 70 India St., Portland, plans to close her gallery.

She writes in an e-mail, “Spring has arrived, but the weather and the economy have taken their toll. I will be closing the gallery at the end of May, which means this is the last show Cooper Jackson will mount.”

That news is not altogether surprising. Art galleries and other entertainment that depend on discretionary income are likely to be among the first casualties of a bad economy.

The final show at Cooper Jackson features the work of photographer Noah Krell.

He photographs staged scenes of domesticity. The show is titled “At Home.”

Says Krell, “Physically, the home becomes a stage where we explore and enact our culturally influenced roles, behaviors and identities. Emotionally, feeling ‘at home’ with oneself or one’s surroundings requires a certain level of acceptance and comfort in one’s own skin. With the daily barrage of messages showing us how we should look and act, and what material possessions we need to be happy and comfortable, it becomes more and more difficult to be truly ‘at home’ with ourselves.”

Krell will attend a reception 4 to 6 p.m. May 3.

This just in from the University of Maine at Presque Isle:

The University of Maine at Presque Isle’s Reed Fine Art Gallery is adding 153 original Andy Warhol photographs to its permanent collection, thanks to a major gift from the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program.

Reed Art Gallery Director Sandra Huck said that university officials signed a contract on March 19 to receive the black and white photographs and Polaroid images, valued at more than $100,000. The Warhol Foundation is donating a total of 28,543 original Warhol photographs – valued in excess of $28 million – to 183 college and university art museums across the U.S. This unprecedented gift is being made through the legacy program in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The foundation oversees the legacy program.

“That this small campus is able to participate in this program and is a recipient of this gift is nothing short of remarkable,” Huck said. “I couldn’t be happier.”

The aim of the Photographic Legacy Program is to provide greater access to Warhol’s artwork and process, and to enable a wide range of people from communities across the country to view and study this body of Warhol’s work, according to foundation officials. The program offers institutions that do not have the means to acquire works by Warhol the opportunity to bring a significant number of photographs into their permanent collections.

For the Reed Art Gallery, some of those photographs include images of Carly Simon, Wayne Gretzky, and Victor Hugo. Fittingly, the gift includes a black and white print titled “Owl” – an owl serves as the University’s mascot.

“What’s really significant about these images is that they are the tangible documentation of the American art scene from the 1970’s to the 1980’s through Andy Warhol’s eyes,” Huck explained. “These images are important in and of themselves, and because of the larger body of work they represent.”

The Reed Gallery expects to receive the photographs by the end of April. Huck said officials hope to get some of them framed and available for public viewing in the coming months.

One of the byproducts of a bad economy and a pensive mood is the need to create community. People tend to gather when the chips are down.

Certainly, we saw that after 9/11 and other recent national tragedies. I sense we’re starting to see it again these days, as the mood in America sours.

Is it coincidental that the Portland Museum of Art drew 5,000 people to the March 7 First Friday Art Walk or that 1,000 people turned out on Sunday for the “Taking Panes” opening at the Ames Mill in Richmond?

I think not. Art brings people together. Art creates community, because it encourages people to look within themselves and to reflect.

It feels good to be with friends and neighbors. There is substance in a gathering of like-minded people.

“Taking Panes” involves nearly 100 artists from across Maine. Each took an old window from the Ames Mill on the Kennebec River and created an original piece of art. The resulting projects are displayed on the mill’s top floor through the end of March.

Christine Macchi, who heads up Maine FiberArts and is the partner of “Taking Panes” organizer Richard Lee, said the Richmond show has created a strong sense of community.

“A small cadre of worker bees now appears at the mill each morning to just hang, to talk art, and to help out. They've read through the artists' bios in the book and accompany onlookers to share a bit of background about each piece. People are loving connecting over art and are proud of Richmond, proud of Maine and of the artwork,” she wrote in an e-mail.

“Then there are the starry-eyed folks who are dreaming about what they would create for the top floor of that mill – an art gallery, artists studios, the library.”

With the downturn in the economy and a seemingly endless winter, creativity offers hope, beauty and curiosity. At this exhibition, people come to see people, Macchi said.

“That's the power of the arts, witnessed once again, in spades this (past) weekend.”

The Portland Museum of Art has had remarkable success with its exhibition “Bright Common Spikes: The Sculpture of John Bisbee.”

The show, which closes March 23, has drawn more than 23,000 visitors since it opened in late January. While that figure is not a record – an Ansel Adams photography exhibition drew more winter visitors – it is impressive.

Dan O’Leary, museum director, said daily attendance at the Bisbee show often has been double that of attendance during the same time last year. At last Friday’s First Friday Art Walk, more than 5,000 people attended.

Bisbee, who lives in Harpswell, will speak about the show at 2 p.m. March 22 in the museum auditorium.

“This exhibition has had such a broad appeal and achieved major success for us,” O’Leary said in a press release. “We are thrilled with the response to an exhibition by an extremely talented contemporary Maine artist.”

The exhibition is an overview of Bisbee’s work. He is known for making sculpture from brads, nails and spikes.

The month of February offers several great opportunities to experience the rich traditions of Maine art in Portland galleries, and the best may well be at Aucocisco on Congress Street.

In the main gallery by the front door, David Moses Bridges, a Passamaqoddy, displays a 16-foot, hand-hewn birch bark canoe. More than a canoe, it’s an aesthetic wonder, down to the finely etched native motifs that adorn the sides of the canoe.

A basket maker, Bridges also shows many other examples of his work throughout the gallery. He shares the space with a peer, Richard Van Buren.

Bridges made the canoe with a single sheet of birch bark, and harvested the ribs and other structural supports from cedar and maple. He tied it all together with red spruce roots. The boat is seaworthy, made entirely from hand with natural materials.

It is gorgeous, and well worth a look. The show remains up until March 1.

From the surprisingly big-time department, Maine figurative artist Tanya Fletcher will show her work in March in the new Los Angeles showroom of Maine-based furniture-maker Thos. Moser, opening in March.

When she got word that she was selected to show in Thos. Moser’s L.A., Fletcher thought that meant Lewiston-Auburn.

She focuses her work on the human form, and in particular details of the body – a hand, the lips or neckline. In current work, she emphasizes the hands as they are engaged in furniture making.

“My hope is that the figurative movement of the hands illustrates and encompasses the totality of the actual individual in the act of crafting a piece,” she said in an e-mail.

To learn more, visit http://tanyafletcher.com or www.thosmoser.com.

The law and the arts can be a murky mix. Beginning this afternoon, the Maine Center for Creativity and the University of Maine School of Law collaborate on a discussion series designed to help creative thinkers wade through the muck.

The Portland-based Maine Center for Creativity and the law school's Center for Law & Innovation host a discussion from 3:30 to 5 p.m. today at the law school with designer Angela Adams and designer-turned-lawyer Margaret O'Keefe. Today's session focuses on fine arts and graphic design.

Other sessions will include Connie Hayes, Scott Nash, Spencer Albee and others. For details, call 874-6521.

If you are out and about on Sunday, check out the "Linear Perspectives" exhibition at the June Fitzpatrick Gallery at MECA. Beginning at 2 p.m., Brown Brown hosts a discussion with several artists in the show.

Brown, curator emeritus at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, curated the show. It's CMCA's annual winter Portland exhibition.

And, speaking of Brown and Fitzpatrick, they will appear on MPBN's "Maine Watch" program at 8:30 tonight, 6:30 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. Jennifer Rooks hosts a panel discussion about contemporary art in Maine. Also appearing is yours truly.

And finally, am I the only one who thinks the plastic-wrapped building that's going up at the corner of Marginal Way and Preble Street Extension looks something like a Christo installation?

Two prominent Portland arts groups are collaborating to present "Movies at the Square," a film series that launches at 8 tonight and continues each Wednesday through May.

Whitney Art Works and One Longfellow Square are teaming up for the series, which opens with "Five Easy Pieces." Each month will feature a different theme, and will include films from Hollywood as well as alternative titles.

The movies will be shown at One Longfellow Square, 181 State St., Portland.

The February theme is "Music in Films." After tonight's debut with "Five Easy Pieces," the schedule will include "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" at 8 p.m. Feb. 13 and "Topsy Turvey" at 8 p.m. Feb. 20.

The March theme is "Talkies," with "My Dinner with Andre," "Your Friends and Neighbors" and "Mindwalk."

Admission is $6. Call 761-1757.

University of Southern Maine artist-in-residence Gideon Bok begins an on-site painting 2 to 4 p.m. today at the USM Art Gallery in Gorham.
The USM gallery will function as Bok's painting gallery during this process. During his residency, he will work on a piece that will be left to USM as part of his residency.
An exhibition of his work, "Analog," runs Feb. 26 to April 6. He will work on his on-site painting 2 to 4 p.m. today, Feb. 13 and Feb. 27, and again March 5, March 12 and April 2.

Welcome to the Artful Blogger, and thank you for taking the time to visit. We hope this blog provides enough timely, useful and provocative information that you will check back often. I plan to update regularly – several times a week, or more when appropriate.

My goal is for this blog to become a place for the fast dissemination of information about the arts in Maine. I view this blog as a complementary piece to my regular arts stories, columns and dispatches that appear in Go, our entertainment guide that comes out each Thursday in the Portland Press Herald, and the Audience section in the Maine Sunday Telegram.

I run into stories all the time that I never get to tell -- not enough time or space for all of them. The blog provides an outlet for those stories.

The information that appears here will be grounded in fact and will meet the same journalistic criteria of any arts stories that appears in the printed paper.

With that in mind, here we go …

I caught up with Daniel Minter on Monday morning at the new Museum of African Culture at 13 Brown St. in Portland, just off Monument Square and a few doors up from Margarita’s.

The museum, which used to beon Spring Street, celebrates its new home with a ribbon-cutting at 6:30 p.m. Friday. Minter also will open his exhibition “Maine’s Malaga Island,” a series of paintings and woodcuts he created to honor those who lost their homes when the state removed them from the midcoast island in 1912.

The work focuses on the notion of home and the struggles of people have to keep their homes. It’s powerful work, full of impact and passion. Look for my column about Minter and the museum in Audience this Sunday.

Cecil MacKinnon, director of “Much Ado About Nothing” at Portland Stage Company, arrived in Portland on Monday afternoon. She meets with cast and crew for the first time Tuesday morning. She’ll give her vision of the show, then turn the cast loose for its first read through. The play opens Feb. 29.

February is an exceedingly busy month for local theater. Mad Horse opens the much-anticipated stunner “The Pillowman” on Thursday in the studio theater at Portland Performing Arts Center, and Good Theater is in the midst of its run of “Marvelous! The Judy Garland Song Book” at the St. Lawrence on Munjoy Hill. Meanwhile, Portland Stage continues with “Fully Committed” through Feb. 17, and USM is readying “To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday” for a Feb. 14 opening. Acorn Productions teams with USM for a free performance of a 90-minute, three-person verion of “Hamlet” at 7 p.m. Feb. 12 in the Gerald E. Talbot Lecture Hall of the Portland campus, and Good Theater returns with “Prelude to a Kiss,” opening a four-week run on Feb. 14 at the St. Lawrence. See you in the aisles.