BANGOR — It’s a glaring absence, to anyone with an affinity for the arts. Bangor, third-largest city in Maine, home to 31,000 people, claims a first-rate library, a professional theater company and its own symphony.

But no art museum.

It can be argued that art museums are what separate towns from cities, destinations from rest stops, up-and-coming places from places that aren’t going anywhere. To one kind of observer, it’s the art museum that makes Portland a smaller New York or Boston instead of an oversized Freeport.

Bangor was bypassed in the late 19th century, when many American art museums were born, but hope of a home for the visual arts hasn’t been given up. The city is considering not one but two proposals from Maine institutions that want to hang paintings and teach art in the old Freese’s department store building downtown.

If one of the plans moves forward, Bangor may yet step up to the role of true cultural hub.

The University of Maine in Orono and the Portland-based Maine College of Art, known as MECA, both want a presence downtown. They agree there isn’t a large enough audience to support two similar efforts. So the city must choose one.

Either way, the proposed visual arts center would be one part museum, with changing exhibitions, and one part art school, with classes for children and adults. The center could fill 12,500 square feet on three floors at the front of the Freese’s building, next to the proposed Eastern Maine Children’s Museum.

Susan Potters, director of the Maine Alliance for Arts Education, said an arts center would draw a regional audience, from places such as Lincoln and Millinocket where people already consider it no big deal to come to Bangor.

“The more we can have for them here, besides the mall, the better,” she said. “I’m convinced there’s so much need for Bangor to take a leadership role. We should be the hub of a tremendous area for the arts.”

Similar visions

Bangor City Councilor John Rohman said there was some surprise when two like-minded contenders responded to a public request for proposals to develop the space downtown.

UMaine and Maine College of Art outlined their intentions in January in separate presentations before the city’s community and economic development committee.

Committee Chairman Michael Aube hopes for a quick decision and a swift turnaround. He expects the committee to recommend one of the proposals to the City Council by the end of March.

“We’re not looking for proposals that are going to happen three to five years from now,” he said. “We don’t want to drag it out. We’ll either go with one of the parties or … look at other alternatives.”

If an agreement is struck, UMaine or MECA will take on a partially finished space in “white wall” condition after renovations are finished this summer.

For seven years, Maine College of Art has run Saturday art classes at Hampden Academy, a means of fulfilling its statewide mission. Two to five classes are offered during each 10-week semester.

“We’d like to see if we could do more in serving this area,” college President Roger Gilmore said, “during the week and not just on the weekend.”

The college, formerly the Portland School of Art, enrolls 320 students in Portland in its four-year bachelor of fine arts program. A master of fine arts program was added two years ago.

Gilmore said he became interested in the Freese’s building because of its similarity to the former Porteous department store in downtown Portland, acquired by Maine College of Art four years ago. Six million dollars has been spent so far to renovate three of five floors.

Gilmore proposes the creation of a “MECA Bangor Gallery,” described as a small-scale museum of contemporary art with changing exhibitions and free admission. Small art classes in two upstairs studios might attract 60 to 120 students each week. Their tuition would help pay the bills.

Maine College of Art would claim, at most, half the space remaining in the Freese’s building after the needs of the children’s museum are met. The University of Maine proposes a larger arts center that would consume all of the remaining space.

Gilmore, the Maine College of Art president, seemed uneasy with the idea of a competition between his institution and the University of Maine.

If the university is serious and willing to commit resources, he said, a partnership with Orono “might not be an unreasonable thing for the city to endorse … The university may be in a better position to fund this, staff it, pull it off. It’s a leap of faith for us.”

The costs of culture

Unfortunately, in presenting similar plans for a satellite downtown, funding was the major obstacle identified by the University of Maine.

Chief Financial Officer Bob Duringer estimated annual expenses of $150,000 to maintain exhibition space and classrooms in Bangor, plus an initial investment of $300,000 to $375,000 to finish the building.

The university isn’t saying just how much it would spend on the space. Money also is needed to fix up some on-campus buildings, including the library, where facility shortcomings are being studied.

“We would like to make it revenue-neutral, so it doesn’t cost us a lot of money. We’re a university, not an art museum,” Duringer told city officials.

The new facility would not replace the overcrowded Museum of Art at Carnegie Hall on the Orono campus. But by giving UMaine another gallery — one that’s more accessible to the general public — it would increase the museum’s capacity to show its 5,700-piece collection, often described as one of the state’s hidden gems.

Rebecca Eilers, UMaine dean of arts and sciences, said special events at the arts center might include Saturday workshops on furniture painting and bookmaking, outdoor sketch trips and Friday evening lectures with dessert.

“What we don’t know is Bangor’s response to this kind of program,” she said. “We would pretty much need to fill it [the class schedule] to make it work.”

MECA’s Gilmore said enrollments at the Saturday school in Hampden have been largely dependent on scholarships. Two-thirds of students receive assistance.

Ample enthusiasm

It’s not hard to find people who would like to see more art in Bangor. Asked what the absence of a museum here has meant to him over a lifetime, artist and retired Bangor High School art teacher J. Palmer Libby didn’t mince words.

“It means that in order to see highly competent artwork, I have to go somewhere else,” he lamented. “If I wanted to study the painting technique of the 17th century, I would have to leave Maine and go to Boston or New York.

“The Maine museums are wonderful, as far as they go. But there isn’t the money available to stock great artwork.”

Of course, Libby realizes the gallery downtown won’t be hanging work by Botticelli or Caravaggio. But the idea of an arts center pleases him, and based on his experience, he predicts widespread interest, especially in the classes.

“It’s rare a week goes by I’m not approached by someone who asks for art lessons,” said Libby, who doesn’t typically take on students but lately has made exceptions for two 13-year-olds from Orono and a Surry 18-year-old.

There is also evidence that exhibitions will draw crowds. The Clark House Gallery has bravely held its own on Hammond Street in downtown Bangor for 2 1/2 years, and owner Susan Maasch said it has become a kind of hub all by itself.

Receptions for new shows are attended by 200 to 250 people, on average, and daily foot traffic is a steady 15 to 25 visitors.

“Our mailing list shows people are coming in from all over,” said Maasch. “Art lovers are passionate. They will go out of their way. And if there are two or three galleries here, they will come more and more.”

Economic engine

The proposed arts center is not without its downside. By turning over the cleaned-up Freese’s building to nonprofits, the city will lose the possibility of tax income from for-profit tenants.

The problem is, there aren’t any for-profits angling to move in.

“We have nothing now,” said Aube, chair of the city’s economic development committee. “With this we improve the property and increase activity downtown.”

After a long period of decline, it appears that Bangor’s downtown has gathered momentum toward a turnaround. Cadillac Mountain Sports occupies a once-vacant corner, resale and vintage clothing shops attract funky teens and budget-minded businesswomen, and the New Moon Cafe, now a year old, is busy at lunch and swings at night with dinner, dancing and live music.

While appearing to pick up steam, the business base is still precarious. An arts center does more to boost business than the apparent alternative — an empty storefront.

“What we’re trying to do is get people downtown, to make sure the existing landlords — those that are paying taxes — have enough pedestrian traffic to stay in business,” said Councilor Rohman.

While in Bangor, visitors to the arts center will do more than see art. They’re going to eat lunch, said Rohman, and they’re going to shop.

“Art and culture as an economic engine is being recognized more and more,” he pointed out.

When the Charles Shipman Payson Building opened in 1983 at the Portland Museum of Art, the effect was dramatic. A study by the University of Southern Maine found the new and improved museum attracted 3,000 new people to the area every week.

The museum cost $1 million to operate its first year. Its economic impact was $2.3 million.

If there’s any time to spare when he’s traveling through Portland, Ted Leonard stops to visit the museum. “I suspect a lot of us do,” said Leonard, a Bangor lawyer and member of the advisory committee for the UMaine Museum of Art. “I’ll go to Rockland just to go to the Farnsworth.

“The museum has caused a fundamental change in Rockland, and I see no reason why it won’t have the same effect here,” Leonard projected.

Past and future success

If university leaders want to make the arts center affordable, they might ask Charles Shepard for tips.

During his leadership of UMaine’s art museum in the late 1980s, before political upheaval on campus reined in his outreach, Shepard ran satellite galleries all over the state.

Houlton, Machias and Bangor were some of the locations where the Bath native sought unoccupied properties to use for a short time for a minimal fee. He even put up a temporary show or two in the Freese’s building.

“We would rent or get a site donated, and the next step was getting a group of volunteers to work with us,” he remembered by phone from the Lyman Allyn Museums at Connecticut College, his latest post. “We had student interns help with the curatorial work.”

Staff and volunteers showed up at openings with Band-Aids on their fingers, the casualties of slicing cheese for platters of hors d’oeuvres.

“We never hired a caterer — it was straight from the heart,” said Shepard. “It worked, and it added very little to our budget.”

Wally Mason, the UMaine museum’s current director, believes that if the arts center is built, people will come. Five years ago, his duties at the University of Idaho included a very successful downtown gallery.

When Mason arrived, openings were attracting 500 to 700 people in the Idaho town of Moscow, population 20,000.

“People could come in and look at art, and then go across the street and talk about it over a cup of coffee,” he recalled. “Rather than here at the university, where you look at art, get in your car and go home.”

The museum proposals are thrilling, but it’s not the first time Bangor has come close to filling out its arts roster. Ten years ago, Shepard was within sight of opening a permanent UMaine arts center at the old Waterworks building on the Penobscot River.

“Everything looked very, very doable,” said Shepard. “The president was behind it; we had a nod from the City Council.”

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what happened next. Support for the president who backed the plan was waning. Insecurity gripped the campus, turning the tide against outreach.

Shepard sums it up simply.

“Everybody has to want it bad enough,” he said.