Portland Art Museum & PAM CUT
Art Unbound has been the Portland Art Museum and Northwest Film Center’s official podcast since March 2019. Originally launched as The Portland Art Museum Podcast, Art Unbound not only celebrates creative community members of Portland and its surrounding areas, but also those from around the world. 2021 has been a huge year for the podcast,… Read more
On October 8, 2021, Dr. Kara Cooney presented a virtual lecture for the Portland Art Museum audience titled When Women Ruled the World. We anticipated that Dr. Cooney’s lecture and the exhibition Queen Nefertari’s Egypt would raise a lot of difficult questions. On this episode, Jeannie Kenmotsu is joined by Sara Krajewski and Stephanie Parrish… Read more
This joyful, exuberant painting is an example of the rich vocabulary of auspicious symbols in Chinese art. The combination here of flowering peonies with pink crabapple and white magnolia blossoms, for example, can be understood as a visual-verbal rebus meaning “May your noble house be blessed with wealth and honor” (yutang fugui). The lively, full… Read more
One of the finest objects in our Korean art collection is one of the smallest, at only 4 inches high. This exquisite celadon cup forms the shape of an open flower with six petals. Crackles in the glaze were caused as the vessel cooled after firing. Underneath the crackles, you can see graceful, lightly carved… Read more
![[Image description: Arbre (Tree), Minami Keiko, 11 7/16 x 11 7/16 inches, color etching and aquatint on paper. A square print depicting a highly stylized landscape featuring a large tree, a cloud, and a partial sun. The large tree begins at center bottom, its thick trunk rising and splitting into a wide V shape. The black bark is depicted as short vertical dashes grouped and layered at the trunk’s sides to convey depth. In the space left by the V-shaped branches are three oversized leaves placed side by side. The one in the middle has a pointed top while the other two have rounded tops. They are larger than the tree’s trunk and are composed of a multitude of smaller etched leaves over vertical dashes. Enveloping the large leaves and the upper branches is a muted green shape resembling a circle with the top edge depressed into itself. The circle contains more vertical black dashes. A line drawing of a bird is perched on the top right of the green shape. Above, a thin cloud composed of horizontal dashes appears. Just off center at upper left, a half circle resembling a partial sun is composed of concentric dashes. The background is a pale gray and resembles woven fabric.]](https://nwfc.pam.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Minami-Keiko.jpg)
Minami Keiko’s etchings offer the magic of fairy tale-like, narrative settings. Her fine touches on the printing plate and understated colors result in delicate, sometimes whimsical scenes. For me, she is often sweet without being cloying. Yet some prints hint at a deeper and more mysterious sense of ennui, loneliness, or alienation. Minami was orphaned… Read more
This print is one of 12 split-screen compositions that represent each month of the year. Much like writing resolutions or eating black-eyed peas, The First Month shows activities associated with New Year celebrations. At the top, a handsome young man writes New Year greetings on a sheaf of paper tied to the decorative pine. A… Read more
In 2021, the Year of the Ox begins. 1829 was also an ox year. Poets in Mino province commissioned the artist Keisai Eisen to design this special print to commemorate the new year. Privately commissioned prints like these are called surimono and feature expensive materials and techniques. This small ox figurine, sitting on layered futon… Read more
The Portland Art Museum is pleased to announce that Jeannie Kenmotsu, Ph.D., has been appointed as The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Asian Art. Dr. Kenmotsu, who joined the Museum’s curatorial staff in 2017 as Japan Foundation Assistant Curator of Japanese Art and was promoted to Associate Curator in 2019, has also been serving… Read more
Zhao Zongzao’s mist-shrouded mountain landscape has reminded me of the foggy scenes of Oregon these last weeks. Zhao’s subject is the natural scenic area around Mount Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), south of the Yangtze River. One dramatic site is named for the celestial Mount Penglai, legendary island of the immortals. Here, the artist evokes the soaring… Read more
“Iwami Reika passed away earlier this year, at the age of 93. I’ve been reflecting on her body of work for several months, and with rain pouring down in Portland today, the memory of wildfire smoke still fresh, her ‘Song of Water’ feels like an appropriate celebration of the drips and sloshes and susurrations. Iwami… Read more