Author: Michael Smith

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Daily Art Moment: Edward Penfield

Image description: Harper’s June 1895, Edward Penfield, color lithograph, 18 ¾ x 12 13/16 inches. A portrait-oriented poster showing a male figure dressed in a black graduation cap and gown, holding a book while smoking a pipe under the tomato red words: “Harper’s June”. “Harper’s” is stretched across the top of the print and the word “June” sits under it to the left on the pale tan background. The figure is shown from the knee up at right. He is turned to the left, has peach-colored skin and yellow, short hair under his mortar board. He smokes a small brown pipe and holds up an orange book as if reading. A white shirt, black tie and blue vest are seen under the robe. He holds a tan rectangular object in his left hand by his side. The lower left holds five large rose blossoms on long, pale green stems with leaves. One flower overlaps the figure’s black gown. The artist’s signature appears in orange at left of the roses.
Edward Penfield (American, 1866–1925), Harper's June, 1895. Color lithograph. Gift of Daniel Bergsvik and Donald Hastler, 2020.42.31

Congratulations to the Class of 2021! This charming poster, advertising the June edition of Harper’s Magazine, gives a nod to the graduates of 1895. Artist Edward Penfield is credited with inventing the American publishing poster, a boom that thrived in the 1890s. Each month, Penfield created a lithograph to promote the magazine. He drew on…  Read more

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Marking Juneteenth: A Conversation About Candlesticks and Slavery

Francis Nelme, Pair of George II Figural Candlesticks, 1730, silver, Museum Purchase: The William H. Nunn Trust Fund, established in memory of his wife, Alice B. Nunn, public domain, 2012.82.1a,b.

For the past few years, Ted Smith, longtime Portland Art Museum Visitor Services Lead has been marking Juneteenth by doing one of the many things that he does so well—connecting Museum visitors with art and making connections to our shared history of slavery and its lasting impact on our society. June 19th is Juneteenth, the…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Samantha Wall

“The shadow is both a part of our identity and apart from it. It is our counterpart and sometimes the truer part.” —Samantha Wall, 2021 Flayed is a drawing from Samantha Wall’s series titled, Shame on Me, hauntingly rendered as a self-portrait silhouette and shadow. Though much of the figure’s details are unknown, Wall beautifully…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Ansel Adams

Image description: Grass and Burned Stump, Sierra Nevada, California, Ansel Adams, gelatin silver print. A black and white, vertical photograph of a close-up view of a burned tree stump with grass growing at its base. Most of the photo features the highly textured burned tree bark. Deep cracks run vertically down the trunk and off to a thick root that extends to the left. The bark breaks down into uneven, corrugated segments between the vertical cracks, giving the trunk a wrinkled appearance. Sparse blades of grass grow at the base about a third of the way up the photo and are highlighted against the dark shadow on the trunk.
Ansel Adams (American, 1902–1984) Grass and Burned Stump, Sierra Nevada, California, 1935, Photograph, gelatin silver print 2018.2440 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Lane Collection, © The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Last Sunday, we invited you to spend some time writing with Laura McPhee’s Midsummer (Lupine and Fireweed), which offered a scene of blooming wildflowers at the foot of charred tree trunks. Today, let’s spend some time with this photograph by Ansel Adams, which McPhee cites as an inspiration for her work. Notice how a closer…  Read more

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Markham Elementary and Ansel Adams

Erica Huber teaches art to Kindergarten through fifth-grade students at Markham Elementary in Southwest Portland. Like teachers everywhere, she had to reinvent her teaching practice this year for distance learning. She packaged art supplies for students to use at home and recorded videos of herself for lessons that students could take asynchronously. Huber sought ways…  Read more

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Community Discover Learn

Postcards to the Earth: PPS HeART of Portland Exhibition and Showcase 2021

This month, the Portland Art Museum is celebrating the extraordinary work of Portland Public Schools students and teachers with an Ansel Adams-inspired installation in the Museum gift store windows. The installation is part of the annual K-12 student arts showcase, The HeART of Portland, scaled down for a school year in which most students spent…  Read more

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Community Discover Learn

Write Around PAM: Laura McPhee

Image description: Midsummer, (Lupine and Fireweed), Laura McPhee, inkjet print. A landscape-oriented photograph of charred tree trunks densely packed with few branches amid a forest floor abundant with greenery and purple lupine spires. The upper two-thirds of the photo contains blackened tree trunks against a gray sky. The trunks can be seen receding well into the distance. The bottom third of the work shows bright green foliage and clumps of spiky purple lupine blooms in the sunshine. The trees in the foreground show crenellated, burnt, black bark. A tree on the right has lost parts of its bark and has its pale beige wood exposed.
Laura McPhee Midsummer (Lupine and Fireweed), 2008 Photograph, inkjet print Courtesy of the artist. © Laura McPhee. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

 “Photographing in the burned forest was one of the great, joyful experiences of my life,” Laura McPhee has said, “finding that catastrophe to be so beautiful,… so stunningly unexpected.” In McPhee’s Midsummer (Lupine and Fireweed), landscape provides a metaphor for loss and the regenerative power of natural cycles. This week, we invite you to contemplate…  Read more

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Community Connect Discover

Listening to Community: Reflecting on The Numberz and Portland Art Museum Partnership

Photo credit: Jason Hill

Written in collaboration by Jaleesa Johnston and Stephanie Parrish from the Portland Art Museum and DJ Ambush from The Numberz FM A central component of our work at the Museum is building meaningful relationships that strengthen the bridge between art and community. This guiding principal has been at the core of an ongoing partnership with…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Catherine Opie

Image description: Untitled #1 (Yosemite Valley), Catherine Opie, pigment print. A portrait oriented, color photograph of a distant waterfall and mountain range framed by evergreen trees. The photograph is out of focus, giving it a painterly quality. At center is a waterfall emanating from a mountain ridge near the top of the image. The colors are faded beiges and white. Evergreen trees flank both sides of the waterfall. Beginning at top right and continuing on a slant to near center bottom, a block of dark evergreen trees creates a deep V shape framing the waterfall and continuing in a wispy fashion on the left edge of the photo. A pale blue sky completes the composition.
Catherine Opie , Untitled #1 (Yosemite Valley), 2015 Photograph, pigment print 2018.2220, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Stephen D. and Susan W. Paine Acquisition Fund for 20th century and Contemporary Art, © Catherine Opie, Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

How can we bring new understanding, new light to something we already know so well? Catherine Opie’s Untitled #1 (Yosemite Valley) offers us a place to start. Opie’s photography gives us new ways of seeing iconic landscapes. We invite you to spend some time today writing with this photograph and discovering what comes up for…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Cowlitz artist

Image description: Basket, Cowlitz artist, cedar root, beargrass and dyed beargrass, 7 ¾ x 10 x 9 ¼ inches. 1. A round woven basket featuring a chevron pattern rendered in three tones of materials: light beige, medium brown, and dark brown. The basket has a wide mouth and gently narrows to a small base. It is tightly woven using the medium brown tone as a background on which the light beige and dark brown are used to create pattern. The dark brown and pale beige combine to repeat a double chevron pattern around the basket in an upper and lower row. At the center of each chevron at the top is a small, inverted triangle shape.

Plateau basketry traditions encompass several techniques including coiling which we see with this delightful Cowlitz basket. The vibrant design of this sturdy and well-balanced basket is a wonderful example of the decorative use of imbrication. This process transformed a basket of plain appearance (as seen on the inside) with the addition of different colors of…  Read more