In 2024, USM welcomed Dr. Kyle Nielsen as Director of the Osher School of Music and Head of Choral Activities. He and Dr. Kelly Hrenko, Associate Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, are bringing exciting new leadership and an integrated 21st century approach to the arts at USM. They are collapsing silos across the arts and activating an energetic vision for this energetic new space.
“This building is student focused, student first, and human first.”
– Dr. Kyle Nielsen, Director of the Dr. Alfred and D. Suzi Osher School of Music and Head of Choral Activities
Integrating the visual and performing arts
The Crewe Center for the Arts will expand interdisciplinary programming opportunities for students of all ages, integrating music and the visual arts, and drawing new audiences through our doors. The Crewe Center will enable:
- Engagement with learners at every point along the lifespan
- Expanded year-round programming, exhibitions, installations and performances
- Summer artist-in-residency programs
- Collaboration with K-12 students, local and statewide
- Enhanced recruitment and retention of talented students from Maine and beyond
- Partnerships with Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), Osher Map Library, museums, and arts and cultural organizations throughout Maine
In addition to USM’s strong Art Department programs based in Gorham, the visual arts at USM will now have a prominent presence in Portland, the heart of the arts community in Maine. At the core of the new Center is the Great Hall Gallery, a unique space that will focus on interdisciplinary exhibitions, events, and installations that incorporate technology, performance, and artwork that straddles media.
The Great Hall Gallery will complement other visual arts galleries, museums, and venues in our region, with its unique architecture and interdisciplinary, community-based arts vision.
Kat Zagaria Buckley, Director of Art Exhibitions and Outreach, plans future exhibitions that will showcase USM community work by students, faculty, and alumni, as well as national caliber artists. “The large scale of the Great Hall Gallery allows us to draw on our strong pool of visiting artists to alter and transform our exhibition space.”
The first permanent acquisition for the Crewe Center’s collection is “Out in May Back by October,” a monumental, hand-beaded mill paper tapestry by artist and poet Summer J. Hart.
The work is an installation of pulped, dyed, and beaded salvaged paper from the East Millinocket paper mill. The black and white image that emerges from this technique is a portrait of the artist’s grandparents, who met on the Listuguj River Mi’gmaq reservation at a Great Northern Paper Company recruitment drive.