Twenty-sixteen was a sea change year for the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. Founded in 1952 as an artists’ collaborative (then called Maine Coast Artists), CMCA was nomadic. Future heavyweights like Alex Katz, Louise Nevelson, Lois Dodd and Fairfield Porter showed work in spaces that sat, conceptually, as far from the Chelsea “white cube” as you can get: a town office, a barn, and a potato barrel storage loft.

By 1967, CMCA found a permanent home in a former firehouse and livery stable in Rockport. The exhibition program grew, education programs were launched — and so was a biennial, which since 1978 has maybe been the riskiest move, asking the one and only full-time curator (today, there are two) to install works picked by jurors that are under no obligation to consider the space in which it is shown. And as programs and attendance grew, so did the need for a more forgiving and expansive space. So in June 2016, CMCA opened new doors on a new space in Rockland. Designed by architect Toshiko Mori to maximize the Maine coast’s legendary light, and with an eye toward balancing traditional and new, electronic mediums, CMCA’s new galleries and courtyard provide a kind of laboratory for exhibitions of contemporary art. We sat down with CMCA Executive Director and Chief Curator Suzette McAvoy to talk about the design of the galleries, then with artists Don Voisine and Lauren Henkin, whose 2016 exhibitions were part of CMCA’s inaugural cycle, to discuss how their work engaged the space.