Mark Bessire has been the Director of the Portland Museum of Art since March, 2009. Previously, he was Director of the Bates 
College Museum of Art in Lewiston. He moved to Bates from the Maine College of Art in Portland, where he was the Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art.
Mark has earned a strong reputation for organizing unique exhibits that have increased participation in the Portland Museum of Art, and were supportive of cross-disciplinary studies at Bates and MECA.
 
Bessire holds an M.B.A. from Columbia University, a M.A. in art history from Hunter College, and a B.A. from New York University. He was a Helena Rubinstein Fellow at the Whitney Museum of Art and a Fulbright Fellow in Tanzania. He has published widely including three books with MIT Press, has organized numerous traveling exhibitions, is active in local, community, and national public art programs, lectures on museum studies, and has participated on national art juries. Bessire is a founding board member of the non-profit Africa Schoolhouse, which is dedicated to building schools in rural Africa.