I liked and appreciated the letter from David Chase in the May 11 Press Herald (“142 Free Street is an asset, not a hindrance”). It was short and decisive. And it outlines a positive constructive course of action for the Portland Museum of Art at the present point in its life, bypassing the vexed issue of constructing a new building on the grave of an admired and hitherto protected one championed and modified by Portland’s most famous architect years ago.
Proponents of that new and objectionable development have offered several spurious claims to the need and desirability of this proposed annex to the PMA — including improving the neighborhood and answering an immediate need for more display area. Get real! The management’s proposal is overdone, unreasonable and financially (also popularly) dubious at best. The PMA’s leadership seems to have been overcome by what is technically known as an “edifice complex.” Let us have something nice, as well as reasonable. And get on with it.
James Osborn
Portland
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