Your walk brings you to the Portland Museum of Art, the largest and oldest public art institution in Maine, in the downtown area known as The Arts District. Founded as the Portland Society of Art in 1882, the museum used a variety of exhibition spaces until 1908, when Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat bequeathed her three‑story mansion—now known as the McLellan House—and sufficient funds to create a gallery in memory of her late husband, Lorenzo De Medici Sweat, a U.S. Representative. Noted New England architect John Calvin Stevens designed the L. D. M. Sweat Memorial Galleries, which opened to the public in 1911.
Over the next 65 years the size and scope of exhibitions grew until the limitations of the galleries, storage, and support areas became apparent. From 1960 to 1962 Donelson Hoopes served as director. In 1976 Maine native Charles Shipman Payson promised the museum his collection of 17 paintings by Winslow Homer and gave $8 million toward an addition to be designed by Henry Nichols Cobb of I. M. Pei & Partners, and construction began on the Charles Shipman project.
Margaret Sweat's 1908 gift still shapes the galleries and the Arts District spreading before you.