The Portland Museum of Art is proud to host the first New England installation of Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency in more than 30 years. This seminal slideshow installation, considered one of the great works of art of the late 20th century, last exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 2016. The Portland Museum of Art exhibition marks the first time the Massachusetts-born artist has shown the work in New England since 1985, when it exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency—named for a song in Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s 1928 The Threepenny Opera—comprises nearly 700 photographs taken by Goldin of herself and her friends throughout Provincetown, Boston, New York, Berlin, and Mexico. In creating this diaristic account of her life throughout the 1970s and ’80s, a kaleidoscopic narrative of romantic longing, loss, intimacy, and breakups emerges, featuring both heterosexual and same-sex couples in raw, vivid honesty. In her own words, the work is about “creating a history by recording a history.”
The photography of Nan Goldin offers audiences a kaleidoscopic narrative of the breadth of the human experience. Beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present, Goldin captures her world as it unfolds before her, resulting in a diaristic account of her life and the people and places that define it. Treating her camera as an extension of her own body, “creating a history by recording a history,” Goldin shields her memories from revision or erasure by preserving them permanently in photographic form. The result is an unvarnished, intimate, and honest glimpse into a full and nuanced life that has played out in New York City, Boston, Provincetown, and abroad, against the backdrops of nightclubs and drag bars, hotel rooms and hospitals, and more.
Organized by the Portland Museum of Art, Nan Goldin explores American artist Nan Goldin’s (b. 1953) use of photography as a means of communication, self-reflection, and poetic expression. For more information, call (207) 775-6148 or visit portlandmuseum.org.
Courthouse Gallery Fine Art in Ellsworth is presenting three exhibitions featuring Philip Barter, Gregory Dunham, Heidi Daub and Richard Keen. “My Maine” is the first retrospective of Maine painter Philip Barter since his death in 2024. Known for his stylized renderings of trees, rivers, mountains and clouds, Barter developed a distinctive visual language through bold […]
The Maine Museum of Photographic Arts in Portland will host an artist panel from 5 to 8 p.m. Aug. 21 in conjunction with “Investigations into the Metaphysical,” on view through Oct. 3. The exhibition brings together work by Brendan Bullock, Marianne Bernstein, Brenton Hamilton, Peter Shellenberger, Fern Nesson, Joyce Ellen Weinstein, Elizabeth Opalenik, Luc Demers […]
High Peaks Artisan Guild in Kingfield is featuring the work of multidisciplinary artist, sculptor and jeweler Samuel Goldstein throughout August. Goldstein, who lives in the Western Maine mountains, has spent more than eight years creating small sculptural pieces and jewelry from precious minerals and stones including rainbow fluorite, alabaster, lapis lazuli and Oregon sunstone. His […]
The Boothbay Region Art Foundation in Boothbay Harbor is accepting submissions for “ARTinME 2026,” its fourth annual juried exhibition celebrating large-format art. The exhibition, on view from Sept. 30 to Nov. 7, is open to full- and part-time Maine artists working in large two-dimensional formats in a variety of media and styles. Two-dimensional works must […]
The Deer Isle Artists Association is presenting “Small Works,” its popular annual exhibition showcasing work by artist members, through Sept. 13 at its gallery in Deer Isle Village. The exhibition features small works in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, weaving, woodwork, glass and jewelry. Buyers may take purchased work home immediately, […]
Cynthia Winings Gallery in Blue Hill will open “Seen at the End of the World,” co-curated with Christine Lafuente, on Aug. 23. The exhibition will feature work by Scott Baltz, Stanley Bielen, Avy Claire, Christine Lafuente, Carol Pelletier and Stuart Shils. In the Project Space, the gallery will present “Uncharted Seas,” featuring work by Kate […]
Local Color Gallery in Belfast will welcome guest artist Nell Parker for “New Topics: Spirits in the Land,” on view from Aug. 25 to Sept. 20. The exhibition features linocut and woodcut relief prints that explore animist possibilities within the local landscape through Parker’s pictorial heritage rooted in Western art history. Her work draws on […]
George Marshall Store Gallery in York is showcasing an evolving selection of work by regional artists alongside “Critters,” a group exhibition on view through Aug. 30. Among the works currently highlighted is Amanda Case Millis’ monotype “Three Mornings on Monhegan II,” inspired by one of the artist’s visits to Monhegan Island. Michael Stasiuk’s sculptural “Black […]
Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland is presenting four exhibitions through Aug. 29: Scott Kelley’s “The Whale,” Bo Bartlett’s “Eye of the Beholder,” Richard Estes’ “Woods and Waters” and “Sea Change: A Group Exhibition.” Kelley’s “The Whale” celebrates the 175th anniversary of Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” a novel that has fascinated the artist since he first encountered […]
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