Transcription of Donna McNeil for the show Poetry & Public Art #286
Lisa Belisle: There are many people that I have chance to interview whose reputation precedes them and today, I have the opportunity to interview one of these individuals. This is Donna McNeil. Since retiring as executive director of the Maine Arts Commission, Donna McNeil has continued to support the arts in Maine, working with Dan Crewe as archivist and curator of the Bob Crewe collection of the Maine College of Art, curated the Thomas Moser retrospective at MECA, and wrote a book with Moser to accompany the exhibit, curated Self, Selfie at Engine, and is in the final stages of completing a book on Stonington artist Evelyn Kok. Boy, you’re busy.
Donna McNeil: It sounds like it, but I feel like I have so much free time now that I don’t have to drive to Augusta every day.
Lisa Belisle: Well, that’s true. That does put it in perspective.
Donna McNeil: It puts a big dent in your day to take a couple hours out in the car and… I guess it feels luxurious because I determine my own schedule. That’s always sort of a wonderful thing, when you get to that part of your life where you can make time mold to you instead of the other way around.
Lisa Belisle: It sounds like you’ve earned it. You ran a gallery for quite some time in Massachusetts and you’ve been busy.
Donna McNeil: I did. I owned a gallery, a commercial gallery in Amherst, Massachusetts for 13 years. You know you have those moments in your life where you reach middle age and you look down the street of your life and it becomes a monotone. You know what the end is going to look like. You know that you have a set of friends, a certain community, you’re doing a certain job, and it’s all very predictable. I just got bored with myself. I decided to kind of toss it all in the air and I sold… I had a farmhouse of 14 acres and I sold that. I sold my business, and I just moved to Maine with no prospect really of what I would do, except be in this beautiful place near the sea. An affordable place, an unpretentious place. That was in 1990.
Lisa Belisle: Why Maine?
Donna McNeil: I sort of grew up in a suitcase. My parents worked in the military, so we moved every three years. I had a chance to see the whole country and parts of other countries as well, and I just had this great affinity to the Northeast. I think that’s one of the reasons that Amherst called to me originally. Then I just felt really landlocked there. I love to swim, I love the sort of grand vista where you can think that you can see your European neighbors across the expanse. I had, as most people do, friends who had summer places up here and came up a couple of times, and there’s something about crossing the bridge from Portsmouth into Maine that is palpable. You sense a difference and I don’t know if it’s an ethos, but it really spoke to me. I knew that this is a place I wanted to be, plus it was imminently affordable to live near the water at that time. That was a consideration as well.
Lisa Belisle: How did you get into the arts?
Donna McNeil: I have always been interested in the arts as a kid and then I went to art school. I have a BFA in painting and then did the gallery work in Amherst and thought I wanted to go into museum work, so I went back and got a master’s degree in art history at Harvard, which was a wonderful gift to myself. That kind of later in life learning experience, when you really pay attention instead of being so happy to be out of your house and away from your parents and all that stuff, you take the scholarship more seriously. That was a great gift and then I decided that I actually didn’t want to work in the museum world, that it was a little bit too rigid and stratified for my tastes.
Then I did a lot of things in Maine I became the director of the Barn Gallery in Ogonquit for four years. I had worked at a gallery here in Portland initially and then worked at the Joan Whitney Payson before it was the UNE gallery and then the Barn Gallery job and then I ran Mime Dance for about four years and I got nabbed out of that by the director of the Maine Arts Commission who asked me if I’d be interested in applying, and I sort of flew up the ranks at the Maine Arts Commission, staying there for ten years, and in the state system, there comes a time when you can…. At a certain age with a certain amount of time in service, you can retire with your pension. On that day, I left. I used to wake up in the morning at 6:00 in the morning, I had to get ready and in the car, got to put on my stockings and suit and heels and get up there. I had realized that I didn’t have to do that. I just burst out laughing and my head would drop back in the pillow and I just…. I was so delighted.
I know a lot of people fear retirement, and I think there was a certain kind of trepidation for me not having a title, not having a position, a community, who would I be if I wasn’t that? Because I don’t have a family. My work means a lot in my life. To all of those out there who are thinking about retirement, you’ll be just fine. Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Tell me about that. Tell me about the Maine Arts Commission and your work there. It’s interesting to me that you would say you chose not to do museum work because it seemed very rigid and stratified and you went into state government.
Donna McNeil: I did. I think there’s several things. First of all, I grew up in government essentially. When you’re in the military, you’re in government. I also was a child of the 60s and I was part of the movement. I have this very political side, and I believe in public service. I thought that the Maine Arts Commission would give me a platform to do the most good for the most people, and that the kind of sacrifices that you have to make for public service like a gabillion boring meetings, constantly having to appeal to the legislature for your teeny weeny little budget, relative to other departments, transportation, health and human services, education for example.
The rewards are really great, and you learn to hone your argument so that it can be heard by people on all sides. I think that was a great gift that working in government gave me, how to make people understand the benefits of the arts to everyone. If you have to keep articulating that over and over and over again, you understand the importance of beauty and the transcendent qualities of engaging with the creative making for everybody. That’s why government. Did I ever expect that would happen in my life? No. Like much in my life, it sort of just happened. I didn’t plan it.
Lisa Belisle: If you’re honing your message and you honed that over the ten years that you worked within government, what was that message?
Donna McNeil: I think it varied from audience to audience a little bit, and it also varies whether you’re advocating for one genre or another. For example, there’s a lot of data on music and how beneficial that is for brain growth. There’s great statistics….
Lisa Belisle: You can take a minute. Have some water or something. I’m usually the one who does this.
Donna McNeil: Oh really?
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, there you go.
Donna McNeil: Okay, good, thanks.
Lisa Belisle: I got mine out of the way early this morning, so…. Of course I say that. I’ll be the next.
Donna McNeil: I’m choking, I’m gathering my message to the legislature….
Lisa Belisle: There’s some irony there.
Donna McNeil: Some irony, right?
Lisa Belisle: Right.
Donna McNeil: There are more people accepted into medical school who have trained as musicians, for example, than any other discipline. There’s theories that it sort of grows the two parts of the brain together, so you’re actually using your left and right sides more efficiently. There was data like that that I could present to people that were sort of irrefutable facts. I know facts are much under challenge these days, but there was a time when we accepted a fact as a fact.
Also, I brought people into the conversation by helping them to realize that everybody engages in creative practices in some way throughout their day, whether it’s a formalized practice or not. Where would our life be if we couldn’t turn on the radio and hear a song or go to a film or dance or appreciate the fine arts as well, but those sort of everyday practices, even the creative practice of cooking, for example, or quilting, the things, the domestic practices that women so often did through the ages, the traditional arts were a great way to advocate for the arts. The canoe building, snowshoe making, basket weaving kinds of practices, and the way that beauty enters your life through everyday objects in that way, and how much it enriches our lives. The way that beauty works in your life, it’s such a lift to engage with something that’s aesthetically profound in shape, form, texture, color, that’s sort of beautifully integrated. I think we respond as human beings in a very sort of lifted way to that kind of harmony. Those are the kinds of things that I might say.
Lisa Belisle: I am very convinced. If I was a legislator….
Donna McNeil: Show me the money.
Lisa Belisle: Exactly. I would give you some funds right now.
Donna McNeil: I know. Yeah. I think there’s a pitiful, I think it’s $0.52 a person that goes to fund the arts in Maine and that covers every genre, all the disciplines for the whole state, which is really less than a pack of gum. Of course every year, this year the National Endowment for the Arts would be threatened, sort of the low hanging fruit of budget cuts, and it’s happening again. It’s the sister organization of the agency, so half the funding for the state of Maine comes from the federal government for the arts. It’s important to support the nation in that as well as your regional and local organizations. I think the private support of the arts is wonderful and this country does a great job of that, but I think it makes a statement about your public value system to have your tax dollars go to fund the arts. I think it really talks about your priorities as a nation.
Lisa Belisle: As you’re talking, I’m thinking about some of the places that I’ve visited that have very mindfully designed public spaces for example, and how it makes me feel when I go to those places….
Donna McNeil: Exactly.
Lisa Belisle: If I lived in that place all the time, of course I live in a beautiful place already, but if I lived in a place where somebody came along and said, “We think it’s important to design this space so as to inspire people or help them relax or….” I don’t know, help them maybe even work better.
Donna McNeil: Yeah, I think that kind of sensitivity is becoming more and more prevalent as people design schools, for example, hospitals, spaces that are intended to nurture you in a certain way. I don’t think that we should warehouse our children in schools. I think they should have an exquisite place to visit, and I really don’t believe in dumbing things down for children either. I think they respond to an exquisite aesthetic as passionately as adults. I think that if you honor that in children, that you’re going to raise up a society that is more respondent to beautiful things and beautiful music and beautiful surroundings, beautiful nature. They won’t want to spoil things so readily.
Lisa Belisle: One of the reasons that we are talking today is that you have agreed to be one of our speakers for Maine Live, which is an important program that Maine Magazine is putting on and I’ve had the great fortune to host from the beginning. That is its own art form.
Donna McNeil: Yes. Storytelling is an incredibly potent art form and I am very pleased, thank you, to be one of the speakers this year. My story is not about my public life at all. It’s a very personal story. It’s a story about love and it’s a story about…. You may not realize it until years later, but there are incidents in your life that change your life utterly, completely, and forever. This is a story about one of those decisions in my life, and I’m not going to say anything else about it.
Lisa Belisle: I’m glad that you’re not going to say anything else because I think that there is something about the Maine Live event that is very special, and I think even attempting to describe what you’re going to be talking about…. It probably just isn’t necessary. The fact is, people should go to Maine Live because it is its own thing.
Donna McNeil: I think that anybody who hasn’t experienced a storytelling event is in for a big treat. Something happens between the storyteller and the audience. There’s a great support from the audience that’s terrifically warm and embrace, a kind of a welcome, and it becomes a space that’s safe enough for you to reveal yourself. Often, and certainly in my case, quite intimate ways. All the stories that I’ve heard have been, whatever they’re about, have been incredibly moving for that kind of personal aspect, that kind of feeling that you’re sitting down with somebody you know and trust and sharing something about your life. I love going to them.
Lisa Belisle: We’re very pleased that you are coming to this one, as a speaker this time.
Donna McNeil: Yeah. My story’s also, I feel very timely and…. Yeah. So I’m happy to share it on a lot of levels.
Lisa Belisle: With that said, anyone who hasn’t bought a ticket, please do because we look forward to seeing you there.
Donna McNeil: Yes, thank you. I look forward to being there.
Lisa Belisle: You’re an interesting one for me because immediately upon sitting down across from me before we started recording, we talked about the things that you wished that you had done in your life, and this is despite the fact that we have mentioned all of these things that you have done in your life. You said, “Maybe I wish I had gotten a PhD for example,” among other things.
Donna McNeil: I think it all boils down to, as I briefly mentioned to you earlier, Lisa, being raised in the 50s as a female and not understanding the full range of my choices, and really having to struggle through a lot of years to find a kind of personal integrity or a voice, and with that, a kind of self-determination about who and what you might be in life and how you could contribute fully. I did not do any of the expected things that a young woman of that age is supposed to do. I did not marry and I didn’t have children. I didn’t settle down into any kind of prescribed… I don’t want to say ordinary but, kind of a… I didn’t settle into any expected pathway. The 60s, you know, kind of hit me like a bombshell. It really was quite revelatory to me, that you could be so self-determined, not only in your personal life, but in your country and in your world.
Did I become radicalized? I would say, absolutely. I think it’s quite radical to step outside the expected norms of the female role in society and sort of carve your own paths. I could say that I floundered for a while, I was a back-to-the-lander, I had no experience farming in any way, I was a dismal failure. I didn’t understand that you needed to take the rocks out of your garden. I had the most fascinatingly shaped carrots. I didn’t believe in penning up the chickens, and they ate all the best parts of the strawberries. It was just like a disaster. It was kind of a resting place and a thinking place. I read an enormous amount during those years and I painted and through that I realized how tough it is to actually make a living as an artist, and so I quickly started to work for another person that had a gallery in Amherst and then eventually, within a couple years offered to buy the business from him and that’s how I got into that, which was sort of just tumbling into it.
I managed to make it work until I got kind of bored with it. I had a woman tell me from, my friends in the commercial gallery were all like, “You’re doing a courageous thing, that people will drink your wine and wear your floors out.” That’s just about it. I said, “Well, I don’t care, I’m doing it anyway.” I had a lot of fun with them and supported the artists in that community and learned a lot, and then made my move to Maine and did all the things that I mentioned earlier. Yeah, so the things that I regret is generally like not finding my path earlier, not finding my voice, not understanding my own personal power earlier in life, and being more intentional about my decisions. I think it’s a common thread, I think a lot of people probably feel that.
Lisa Belisle: I was just sitting here thinking about people who are of this generation, let’s just say, who have had more opportunities perhaps as women than generations past. I wonder how much more they or we are taking advantage of that even so.
Donna McNeil: You know, I think that we kind of fell into that place of being superwomen, of trying to do all the things that we were supposed to do in the 50s and then adding on this other professional layer and having to have high levels of competency in both realms, and sort of beating ourselves up if we didn’t meet those self-imposed mostly standards but society steps in there too. I think each generation has their own challenges. Did we let women know that they could be vital in the workforce? Absolutely, but then there’s a price to pay.
We as a society haven’t figured out great health, great childcare systems. We haven’t figured out equal pay for equal work yet, oh my god. Also the kind of other subtle discriminations and patronization from the white male dominant society. I’m sorry to say that, but it’s such a still unrecognized undercurrent of our society and we really need to bring some awareness to that and work on it. You know, young women today are empowered by us but they still have those struggles ahead of them.
Lisa Belisle: I think that it’s also interesting for me having… I’m kind of in between your generation and the generation of my daughter, who is 21 now.
Donna McNeil: There’s a couple of generations in between.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, maybe. Okay, well, wherever we are, we’re along the continuum, and I think about all the white males that I know who actually are not your standard white male, who have actually provided opportunity and are not contributing to the undercurrent and….
Donna McNeil: Yeah. There’s some great ones out there.
Lisa Belisle: It’s an interesting kind of back-and-forth, because I think as human beings in many ways we’ve moved forward and in some ways, we’re still a little stuck.
Donna McNeil: I think women are raising better men these days.
Lisa Belisle: I hope my son agrees with you, my 23-year-old, because I think…. Maybe that’s right. Maybe as….
Donna McNeil: It gets better and better.
Lisa Belisle: It does.
Donna McNeil: Nobody’s a bad person, it’s just sort of an overlay onto our society. It was an assumption. I think most good men, when they are presented with those kinds of understandings about how women are treated in our society, they do come to that realization and they do open up to be more tender beings and more supportive men in our lives.
Lisa Belisle: I think if our conversation has not convinced people that they should listen to you at Maine Live, then I don’t know what will, because I think this is very interesting.
Donna McNeil: Thank you.
Lisa Belisle: We have a lot that we could continue to talk about, but I’m going to leave it with that. I highly encourage people to learn more about you by coming to Maine Live and being part of our community, and I appreciate that you’ve been willing to come in and speak with me today.
Donna McNeil: It’s a delight, Lisa. Thank you for inviting me.
Lisa Belisle: I’ve been speaking with Donna McNeil who, since retiring as executive director of the Maine Arts Commission, has continued to support the arts in Maine, and we are very fortunate to have you.
Donna McNeil: Thank you.
Lisa Belisle: You have been listening to Love Maine Radio, Show #286, Maine Live: Poetry and Public Art. Our guests have included Stuart Kestenbaum and Donna McNeil. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter as Dr. Lisa and follow Love Maine Radio on Instagram. We’d love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Maine Live: Poetry and Public Art show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of Berlin City Honda, The Rooms by Harding Lee Smith, Maine magazine, Portland Art Gallery, and Art Collector Maine. Audio production and original music have been provided by Spencer Albee. Our editorial producer is Paul Koenig. Our assistant producer is Shelbi Wassick. Our community development manager is Casey Lovejoy, and our executive producers are Kevin Thomas, Rebecca Falzano, and Lisa Belisle. For more information on our host production team, Maine magazine, or any of the guests featured here today, please visit us at lovemaineradio.com.