From the State House - Women are what's missing from state's portrait collection

Arba Eugene Powers
of Houlton, who apparently
didn't do much in
life to deserve having
his portrait hung in the
State House, is finally
about to make history.

His picture will be
the first one ever to be
taken down and given
to someone else to take
care of, and his passing
has renewed an old
debate about whether
more relevant portraits
- and more women
- should be hung in the
State House halls.
Legislative leaders
were told last week that
Powers is going to a
better place - the Houlton
Historical Society.

They are looking forward
to him, said J.R.
Phillips, director of the
Maine State Museum.
Powers, identified
as an actor who could
feign a good British
accent, is being pushed
out because he doesn't
fit with the theme of
the collection, which
includes 139 portraits
of political, military or
judicial leaders with ties
to Maine. Only three are
women and two of them
are wives of governors.

The third is U.S. Sen.
Margaret Chase Smith,
the first woman to serve
in both the U.S. House
and Senate, who made
her mark when she took
on Sen. Joseph McCarthy
and his anti-communist
crusade.

As Powers goes out
the door he's actually
already in storage in the
Maine State Museum,
a short walk from the
State House he could
help shake things up.

There's an awful
lot of portraits in the
Statehouse that ought
to go, said Sen. John
Martin, D-Aroostook,
who represents Powers'
old stomping ground.
There's important
women in this state,
Martin, said, suggesting
a review be done to see
if other portraits could
find homes in local historical
societies to make
more room. In the long
run, you could put some
other people up that
have a lot more signifi -
cance to the state.

Some women candidates
who have been
suggested include
Beverly Daggett, the
state's first female Senate
president; Libby
Mitchell, the first female
speaker of the House;
and Leigh Saufl ey, the
first female chief justice
of the Maine Supreme
Judicial Court.

I think we need more
women, said Maine
State Museum curator
Deanna Bonner-Ganter,
who said the collection
was largely put
together during a time
when it was commonly
held that the place of
the woman is in the
home. Now that has to
change, Bonner-Ganter
said.

Phillips agreed the
current collection is
dated.

They're gentlemen of
a certain age and type,
he said, leaving the impression
They're just a
lot of old politicians.
But getting rid of them
won't be easy.

Each time you look at
them individually, they
become more interesting,
at least to someone,
he added, making it
tough to cull people out.

The only new portraits
that come in on a
regular basis are those
of governors, who automatically
get hung once
they're out of office. The
most recent, ending
with former Gov. Angus
King, hang on the third
fl oor and are rotated
once a new portrait is
added to the collection.
The entire 149-piece
State House collection,
including 10 non-portraits,
is worth just over
$1.5 million, valued
more for its historic
versus market value.
The collection started
with a copy of a portrait
of George Washington
at Dorchester Heights,
where the first president
is standing next to his
horse with its back end
facing the painter. The
original was done by
well-known portrait artist
Gilbert Stuart, and it
is still not clear from records
whether the state
ever paid for the copy.

Two original Gilbert
Stuart portraits of the
state's first governor,
William King, and
his wife Ann, are in
the governor's office
placed there over the
years for safe keeping.
Another valuable painting,
Charles Codman's
View of the Statehouse,
is in the governor's
cabinet room. A
portrait of Abraham Lincoln
hangs in the Senate
nearby his first-term
vice president, Hannibal
Hamlin of Hampden.
The State House in
Augusta is open to the
public 8 a.m.-5 p.m.,
Monday through Friday.