To our friends, neighbors, and community, We finished the spring season on an incredibly high note as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism closed with record levels of attendance. More than 300,000 visitors experienced this popular exhibition and its related programming that included live mural painting by local artists, a dual-language family guide, and… Read more
When Portland Art Museum was founded 130 years ago, accessibility and inclusion were not priorities. We acknowledge that much of our institutional structure has led to inaccessibility and the marginalization of Disabled and Deaf visitors, artists, staff, docents, volunteers, and community members. Much has changed in our society and the museum since. This month we… Read more
Starting July 30, 2022 three powerful artworks by Colombian artist Nohemí Pérez will be on view as part of the new special exhibition Traces, presenting poetic reflections on memory in contemporary art by seven international artists. Nohemí Pérez creates multidisciplinary work that reflects upon humanity’s relationship to the natural world and the tensions that arise… Read more
The Museum and tribal leaders held a transfer ceremony in Portland before nine objects of cultural patrimony were repatriated to the Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska Nine objects of cultural patrimony removed from Wrangell, Alaska, in the 1930s and 1940s are now back home in the hands of the Naanya.aayí… Read more
Change is truly the only constant in our lives. We are tied to endless cycles: the sun rises and sets, seasons are reflected in the weather, we appease our appetites only to have hunger return, the seeds we plant mature and wither. Even the pandemic, which has dominated our lives for the last two years,… Read more
Although the exhibition, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism highlights a specific moment in history, many of the artists working in partnership with this show offer dynamic reflections on the current presence of Mexican Modernism’s legacy, resisting static and linear interpretations. IDEAL PDX, a collaborative group of Latino artists established in 2010, is in partnership… Read more
Community Update April 2022
To our friends, neighbors, and community, Our winter and spring have been brightened by outstanding exhibitions like Queen Nefertari’s Egypt and Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism, the latter of which is bringing an average of 9,000 visitors per week downtown and into the galleries. We also continue to uplift and highlight local artists… Read more
Write Around PAM: Shao Yuting
The city of Yixing in China’s Yangtze River Delta is known for its rich clay deposits and millenia-old tradition of hand-made pottery. This small teapot carries so much intricate design and detail, from the inscriptions on one side to the landscape depicted on the other to the hexagonal shape and x-shaped spout—there is so much… Read more
On Monday, artist Lee Kelly passed away at age 89. An artist who helped define Northwest sculpture through his monumental public works, his COR-TEN and hand-polished steel sculptures are focal points in gathering spaces across Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver, Eugene, and as far as Houston. Kelly’s influences were as varied as sculptors Frederic Littman,… Read more
Robert Goodnough was an American abstract expressionist painter and part of the New York School of artists in the 1950s and ‘60s. “Goodnough’s gatherings of floating, overlapping planes fluctuate between suggestive figuration and abstraction, between tight-knit clusters of crisp, geometric shapes and loose accumulations of gestural swipes,” wrote former curator, Bruce Guenther, in the catalogue… Read more