Maine artists remember curator for ‘inventiveness and his love for photography’

Maine’s art community is remembering longtime Portland resident and local photography proponent Stephen Karl Halpert as a lover of life and the arts.

Stephen Halpert in 2009 Press Herald staff photo

A photography curator and the former owner of the iconic art film studio The Movies on Exchange, Halpert died Saturday of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 91.

Halpert spent more than 50 years as the chair of the English department at the University of New England, where he put on photography exhibitions into his 90s. He also taught at the Portland School of Art and the University of Maine.

Karl Halpert, his oldest son, said in an interview that his father was “highly intellectual” and “loved the arts.”

“He had an intense interest and appreciation for any kind of art form. He was a lover of beauty,” Halpert said.

Halpert said he “could not have asked for a better dad” and that people were immediately “drawn to him and trusted him.”

A Waterbury, Connecticut, native, Halpert moved to Portland in 1936 and lived in the city the rest of his life. He graduated from Deering High School in 1951 and earned his undergraduate degree from Brown University in 1995, then his master’s at Harvard.

Halpert and his wife of 68 years, Judy, had four children: Karl, Gretchen, Jacob and Kate. He also is survived by grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews, cousins and dear friends, his family said.

In addition to the exhibitions, Steve and Judy Halpert ran The Movies on Exchange, a space showing art and repertory films, from 1979 through 2009.

“Steve and I enjoyed hosting the Jewish Film Festival at The Movies for many years,” Judy Halpert said. “We especially loved having some of the Israeli actors from the films visiting Portland during the festival.”

Stephen Halpert, shown in 2005, owned The Movies on Exchange Street in Portland. Press Herald staff photo

Kate Lowry, their daughter, said that “Dad believed that things should last for a very long time, maybe even forever.”

“He was incredibly nostalgic, sentimental and respectful of the past,” Lowry said. “This showed in his love of preserving his beloved city of Portland. He (and Judy) were on the board of Greater Portland Landmarks. We have many photographs that Dad took, of buildings in the midst of being torn down, a testament to his nostalgic love for our city.”

“Dad‘s integrity is what will stick with me the most,” Jacob Halpert said. “It was never about money or status. He would never lie to you, but if he disagreed with you, he would just smile and let you talk.”

Gretchen Halpert said her father was “raised in a family that valued film, photography, music and literature. His father, Harold, was a fine pianist who taught music, literature and Latin. His mother, Florence, loved theater and all the arts, and was a designer.”

Photographer Rose Marasco met Halpert in the late 1970s, when she contributed photos to one of his galleries. He was teaching at what was then known as Westbrook Junior College, which would later become a part of UNE.

A ‘POWERFUL, DYNAMIC FORCE’

When Westbrook didn’t have a photography gallery, Halpert made one himself. He set up shop in the college’s Alexander Hall in the 1960s, something Marasco attributed to Halpert’s “inventiveness and his love for photography.”

“It wasn’t really a gallery, but he turned it into a gallery, and started having very good exhibitions,” said Marasco, a retired University of Southern Maine photography professor.

Marasco joked that Halpert had to “beg, borrow and steal” photographs at first, but formed a community of artists who would “gladly” contribute their photos to his exhibitions.

Halpert displayed art in open spaces all over the Westbrook Junior College campus through its merger with UNE in 1996, after which he began putting on rotating shows at the university’s gallery.

In 2016, a multimillion-dollar-a-year gift to the UNE gallery from Leonard Lauder and Judy Glickman Lauder – art collectors of Estée Lauder fame – breathed new life into UNE’s photography collection. For the first time, Halpert had a budget to work with, which he used to buy photographs that he displayed in the newly named Stephen K. Halpert Photography Collection.

Hilary Irons, UNE gallery and exhibitions director, said Halpert was a “powerful, dynamic force.”

“He recognized that a single image, frozen in the timeless space of a photograph, holds the potential for deep introspection,” Irons said. “Steve approached collecting and exhibiting photography at UNE with energy, insight, good humor and an amazing capacity to connect both images and people in his exhibits. “