Blainor McGough

BRIDGTON — Blainor McGough of Gorham is the new executive director for the Rufus Porter Museum of Art and Ingenuity.

McGough is a longtime contributor to the Maine arts scene as a musician, DJ, performing artist, curator and founding executive director of Mayo Street Arts in Portland from 2009-21.

At Mayo Street Arts, McGough curated the center’s music, theater and visual arts exhibits, while implementing arts and community initiatives drawing together artists, youth and diverse cultural communities of East Bayside.

Blainor worked most recently at Maine Historical Society in Portland as a grants specialist.

Founded in 2005, the Rufus Porter Museum features the life and times of a 19th century New Englander, artist and inventor, Rufus Porter (1792-1884). He is known in the folk art community for his miniature portraits and landscape murals found in early homes throughout New England.

The museum is in the midst of a capital campaign to build a new barn on its Main Street campus to display landscape murals of the Rufus Porter School along with inventions and curiosities of Porter’s era. The organization has raised $1.3 million of its $1.6 million goal, and the post and beam construction phase of the project is slated to begin Aug. 14.

“The Rufus Porter Museum of Art and Ingenuity is at a turning point in our history” Therese Johnson, president of the board of trustees, said. “We are thrilled to welcome Blainor as our new director as we launch the next phase of art and community right in the heart of downtown Bridgton.”