Portsmouth Museum of Art plans to relocate to Portsmouth’s West End and reopen in May

The Portsmouth Museum of Art has signed a letter of intent to lease a space at 909 Islington St., part of the former Button Factory building in Portsmouth’s West End.

The museum has been closed since the fall, when it moved out of One Harbour Place near the waterfront, and its board of directors hopes to renovate and relocate by May.

The new location is a large warehouse space of about 4,000 square feet with 16.5-foot ceilings, a row of windows along the top of one 80-foot-long wall, and concrete floors and beams. There’s also a separate entryway for visitors with a restroom and coat check, as well as parking, storage and a loading dock.

The space needs to be gutted and rewired for electricity, as well as heating, ventilation and air conditioning, new lighting, repaired windows, and walls for an office, gift shop and conference room. It also needs cosmetic improvements like a coat of gloss on the cement floor and paint on the walls. 

But museum director Cathy Sununu said the space will remain a simple, utilitarian foundation for hanging art.

“The visual sense that one will get will feel more ‘museum-like’ than Harbour Place, which felt gallery-like,” she said. Although a museum is defined by its mission, not facility, she said the perception will change.

The building’s clean, industrial look should work well with the contemporary art the museum will continue to exhibit, she said. And the openness of the space will allow for larger installations, use of technology and suspended work, with a more cohesive viewing experience.

The former location, donated by Harbour Place for about two years, was in a mixed use space of office and residential, of which they had to be considerate, and there was no room to grow. The exhibition space was divided into two rooms, which were further divided into smaller rooms, and the artwork spilled out into the halls.

Sununu said there is now even more room to expand if necessary, and establishing the museum as a permanent destination gives it security and credibility. “We could certainly be there for a long time,” she said.

A bigger space also allows for group tours, including schools, and Sununu is already in the process of formulating educational programming with prospective partners.

“There are great strategic advantages as well as physical,” she said. She said it will be easier for out-of-town visitors to find the new location and park there.

The board has been looking to relocate for about a year and a half, she said, but the real estate market has been challenging. They had considered occupying an old Frank Jones Brewery building, but Sununu said the financial investment was too much for the young nonprofit.

“This is where we’re supposed to be,” she said. “It’s great for us and it’s good for the city.”

She said the West End is set to become a cultural corridor at the entry point of Portsmouth, and she hopes the city improves the sidewalks and conditions of Islington Street to better connect the area to downtown.

“I just think it has great potential,” Sununu said. “It makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons for us.”

The museum will continue to be dedicated to showing a roster of continually changing emerging work from around the world.

“That doesn’t change,” Sununu said. “What does change is we can accommodate far more.”

She said the museum shows a lot of non-commercial work that isn’t common in galleries where work is for sale. “That’s the kind of thing we should be reaching to do, introducing people to stuff they don’t get to see most of the time,” she said.

The first show planned for the new space is “Routes: Personal Stories of Tibet,” which follows the personal journeys of six artists to where they converge at Lhasa, Tibet. 

The featured artists will include Tibetans Pema Rinzin, Sonam Dolma, Nortse and Gade, Brooklyn-based street art collective Faile, and Iranian Fereydoun Ave. Each considers what it means to use Tibetan imagery and culture in contemporary art and find their own personal reasons.

The subject matter of the exhibition provides a foundation for discussion of growing multiculturalism and its expression through visual art, Sununu said.

The Portsmouth Museum of Art’s last show was the controversial “Street A.K.A. Museum,” which invited international street artists to paint murals on certain properties throughout the city and show examples of their studio work at One Harbour Place.

Sununu said the board of directors is working on the terms of the new lease with King Real Estate.

“It’s kind of like chapter two,” she said.