Portland Art Museum & PAM CUT
This photograph from Jonathan Calm offers a unique glimpse behind the camera, a chance to see the artist at work. As we celebrate Father’s Day today, we invite you to reflect on someone “behind the scenes” in your life who offers you support, care, guidance, and inspiration. Someone who embodies the caring support of fatherhood… Read more
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
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
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
The Cinema Unbound Summer Movie Series, running July, August and September 2021, welcomes guests to safely gather and experience the power that truly radical and entertaining cinematic storytelling can bring. Unbound from the traditional movie theater setting, we’re creating new venues throughout the city starting with the Open-Air Cinema at the Lloyd Center. Cinema Unbound… Read more
“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
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
The Northwest Film Center has announced that filmmakers Masami Kawai and Reed Harkness have been awarded the Oregon Media Arts Fellowship for 2021. The Oregon Media Arts Fellowship is an award given every other year for filmmakers who have shown a commitment to the moving image arts and pushing their practice with new and engaging… Read more
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
![[Image description: Ansel Adams, Sand Dunes, Death Valley National Monument, California, gelatin silver print. A black and white, portrait-oriented photograph of steep sand dunes shown in high contrast shadow and light. The ridge of the main dune begins at upper left, crosses to the upper right then zig zags down to the lower edge of the photo. The steep sides contrast in tone. The right side of the dune is bathed in light and appears as pale gray, while the left slope of the dune is split between being almost black at its upper portion then changing to a medium gray as the dune catches more sunshine. In the background a black, horizontal dune appears, stretching from left to right contrasting with the highlights of the main dunes’ ridge. At upper right in the background, a distant dune appears as a medium gray tone.]](https://nwfc.pam.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SC69764_WEB.jpg)
This work by Ansel Adams captures the seemingly solid, yet always fluid, energy of sand dunes. Shifting under foot, blowing in wind, never looking the same day to day, and yet steadily there. This “sand dune” energy feels like it mirrors our ever-shifting realities as we continue to grapple with changes at school, work, and… Read more