chris thompson

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Looking backward

Seems like it was a pretty good year.
Portland art: 2007 in review
By KEN GREENLEAF | December 19, 2007

The new nomadology

We tracked Smith down to find out how the first summer unfolded.
Institute for Doctoral Studies in Visual Arts’ first summer
By CHRIS THOMPSON | September 07, 2007

Prodigious son

His work looks funnier than it is.
Justin Richel, American in Switzerland
By CHRIS THOMPSON | August 22, 2007

One or several

Ettinger has referred to herself as a painter first, a clinical psychologist second.
Bracha L. Ettinger at the Maine College of Art
By CHRIS THOMPSON | July 25, 2007

“Corridor at Sea: the Performative Object” is an ambitious experiment in thinking through the relationship between performance and installation.
Garrick Imatani’s “Corridor at Sea: the Performative Object” at the ICA@MECA
By CHRIS THOMPSON | July 03, 2007

On the table

“PASS•PORT: identity in the information age” was the theme of this year’s DesignInquiry.
A talk with DesignInquiry’s Margo Halverson
By CHRIS THOMPSON | June 27, 2007

The greenest eye

Bates College Museum of Art opens its “Green Horizons” exhibition — a six-month project, exploring the intersection of art, science, pedagogy, and the notions of sustainability and environmental engagement.
“Green Horizons” at Bates College Museum of Art
By CHRIS THOMPSON | June 06, 2007

Free beer

There are certain works of art in the face of which the critic must simply bow his head and weep.
Sam van Aken at Whitney Art Works
By CHRIS THOMPSON | May 09, 2007

Arms of the ancients

The success of the television show Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? has made it clear to us just how much knowledge and spiritual vigor gets lost after one hits one’s climax at roughly the age of eleven.
Jen Blackstone’s “Academy Proposal” at June Fitzpatrick
By CHRIS THOMPSON | April 25, 2007

Weather delay

Iain Kerr was recently enlisted by Portland Arts and Cultural Alliance to draw up some innovative ways of diagramming data it had gathered through its “Discovery Research Project.”
Ian Kerr on Portland's arts resources
By CHRIS THOMPSON | April 18, 2007

Here’s to you

“Hey there, Mr. Jason Simon. My name is Melanie Fiander, and this is my film.”
Melanie Fiander’s “One Minute Introduction”
By CHRIS THOMPSON | March 28, 2007

Packed kitchen

Artists, film- and bookmakers, teachers, performers, and motorcyclists Leon Johnson and Megan O’Connell recently made Portland the home.
A talk with Creative Material Group’s Leon Johnson and Megan O’Connell
By CHRIS THOMPSON | March 21, 2007

Bread to poetry and back again

“Workers need poetry more than bread,” Simone Weil wrote in her book Gravity and Grace .
Charlie Hewitt brings eternity's light to Whitney Art Works
By CHRIS THOMPSON | February 28, 2007

Anarctic

Having found their way to the threshold of the great Kansas plains, the conquistadors quickly lost it again.
Spurse at sea
By CHRIS THOMPSON | February 21, 2007

Knox's prophet

A Maine native and longtime resident of Belfast, Bern Porter died there in 2004 at the age of 93.
Someone's been reading Bern Porter
By CHRIS THOMPSON | February 07, 2007

Live + in person

By CHRIS THOMPSON | January 31, 2007

Able not to hear

During the years 1796 to 1801, John Brewster Jr. painted the portraits of Colonel and Mrs. Thomas Cutts of Saco.
Early American deaf painter John Brewster Jr. at the PMA
By CHRIS THOMPSON | January 31, 2007

Philm

On January 24, SPACE Gallery kicks off a series of four films and follow-up dialogues exploring contemporary philosophy.
Movies to make you think better
By CHRIS THOMPSON | January 17, 2007

Ideas you never paid for

Three ideas for the artist-(inter)activist.
Three thoughts for 2007
By CHRIS THOMPSON | January 03, 2007

On on!

2007 will see the beginnings of the climb to prominence of a new form of cultural producer in Greater Portland: the artist/developer.
Two trends that will shape the city’s future
By IAN PAIGE AND CHRIS THOMPSON | December 27, 2006

Retroperspective

Rare are the instances of true interdisciplinarity in exhibitions of contemporary art-moments where disciplines meet, mix, and couple to produce offspring that belong to neither field and set off on their own in search of even wilder mates.
A year in Portland art
By IAN PAIGE AND CHRIS THOMPSON | December 20, 2006

Eating the kids

Dressed in finery but an ass nonetheless, just like his grandfather before him. Slideshow: Francisco Goya y Lucientes: Los Caprichos at the Portland Museum of Art, Dec 16-Feb 5, 2007
Goya's Los Caprichos at the PMA
By CHRIS THOMPSON | December 08, 2006

Critical intervention

When the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts gets its final permissions from the state Legislature in early 2007, Maine will become home to the first Ph.D. program in visual arts in America.
George Smith and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts
By CHRIS THOMPSON | November 29, 2006

Border-garde

Next week, in conjunction with the Portland Museum of Art’s exhibit "American ABC: Childhood in 19th Century America," documentary photographer, MacArthur Fellow, and fine human being Wendy Ewald will give the museum’s Nelson Fund for Social Justice Lect
A talk with photographer Wendy Ewald
By CHRIS THOMPSON | November 08, 2006

MoMADness

In September the Museum of the Modern American Dream, an organization dedicated to commemorating the search for the American Dream by ordinary Americans, opened up an extension here in Portland.
The Museum of the Modern American Dream hits town
By CHRIS THOMPSON | November 01, 2006

Last of the Tuba

In a 2006 performance in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, Italy, MaryPat Warming wore a costume with a third prosthetic breast, stood with the Madonna’s poise at the edge of a wall with the vista of Florence unfolding behind her, and endeavored to consume
MaryPat Warming’s burial of feminist theory
By CHRIS THOMPSON | October 11, 2006

Changing worlds

On the USM philosophy department's home page, I noticed Karl Marx’s famous lines from Theses on Feuerbach: “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.”
A talk with USM philosophy professor Jason Read
By CHRIS THOMPSON | October 04, 2006

Letters to the Portland editor: September 29, 2006

War is art
By PORTLAND PHOENIX LETTERS | September 27, 2006

Painting at 3 mph

Friday evening, a group of local citizens — students, activists, interested participant/observers, members of the press, and a surprisingly spare handful of professors — gathered at USM in Portland, preparing to march to Congress Square.
Thomas Manning on parade
By CHRIS THOMPSON | September 20, 2006

Smells like free spirit

Encountering Charlie Hewitt’s work for the first time, at his Farnsworth Museum retrospective, was like meeting someone from the neighborhood where you grow up long after you’ve grown up.
Art and engagement in Autumn 2006
By CHRIS THOMPSON | September 13, 2006

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