The View Forward: 2021-22 Exhibitions & Programs

Though There Be Fury on the Waves: Victor Jorgensen at Sea, 1943–1945 (Continuing)

This exhibition commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II presents indelible moments captured by Portland-born photographer Victor Jorgensen during his wartime service in the U.S. Navy. Online: View virtual walk-through video and works in our Online Collections.

Resist COVID / Take 6  (Through May 2021)

A national public awareness campaign by internationally renowned artist and Portland native Carrie Mae Weems. Launched in April 2020, Resist COVID / Take 6!  draws attention to the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Black, Latinx and Native American communities. The title Take 6! is an allusion to the recommended six feet of separation in social distancing. To support this public art project, the Portland Art Museum mounted banners across its campus and worked with local public agencies and community partners across the Metro area to use billboards and social media to highlight the disparity caused by existing inequalities, to underscore the importance of preventive and protective measures, and to thank the frontline workers risking their safety during this public health crisis. Online: View PAM presentation and billboards, and learn more about Resist COVID / Take 6!

Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, 1956–1965: Japan’s Women Printmakers (Through June 13, 2021)

Examining the expansive and fiercely creative vision of Japan’s first women printmakers association, the Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, this exhibition unearths a critical, dynamic, and understudied episode of modern printmaking history. Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, 1956–1965 is curated by Jeannie Kenmotsu, Ph.D., who was recently promoted to be the Museum’s Asian Art Curator. View a conversation with curator Jeannie Kenmotsu and works in our Online Collections.

Objects of Contact: Encounters between Japan and the West (Through June 13, 2021)

Stunning works of Japanese art from the Portland Art Museum’s permanent collection reveal a fascinating three-century history of cultural dialogue between Japan and the western world. Online: View virtual walk-through video and works in our Online Collections.

APEX: Ed Bereal (Extended through at least June 27, 2021)

In the Museum’s APEX gallery showcasing Northwest artists, installations in a broad range of media illustrate a half-century of Ed Bereal’s biting political art, hurling viewers into a shambolic spectacle that feels all too close to our current events.

Isaka Shamsud-Din: Rock of Ages (Through Spring 2022)

Rock of Ages celebrates Portland artist Isaka Shamsud-Din’s masterful paintings, rich in a narrative combining personal stories and folklore. The vibrant exhibition also highlights the significant mural projects Shamsud-Din has created for Portland in a span of more than 50 years. View online exhibition and virtual walk-through video.

Portraiture from the Collection of Northwest Art (Through Spring 2022)

For this exhibition, artist Storm Tharp helped select works from the Museum’s collection through his keen eyes as a fellow portraitist. The result is a fascinating examination of how portraiture, across remarkably varied themes and styles, allows for a breadth of expressiveness, a scrutiny of the self, and the occasion to connect with those around us. View works in our Online Collections.

Ansel Adams in Our Time (May 5 – August 1, 2021)

Ansel Adams in Our Time celebrates the visual legacy of the acclaimed American photographer and includes some of his most iconic images, from a symphonic view of snow-dusted peaks in The Tetons and Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming (1942) to the sublime Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park (1960). More than 100 photographs by Adams, displayed alongside images by photographers working both before and after him, will offer visitors a deeper perspective on themes central to Adams’s practice, demonstrate the power of his legacy, and spark conversation about the state of the American landscape of the 21^st century. Exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and curated by Karen Haas, Lane Senior Curator of Photographs at the MFA. Curated for Portland by Julia Dolan, Ph.D., The Minor White Curator of Photography. Presented by The Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation/Jordan Schnitzer, with lead support from Fred and Gail Jubitz and Exhibition Series Sponsors.

Online: Watch an online exhibition primer with curator Dr. Julia Dolan and Dr. Rebecca Senf, author of Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams; listen to a conversation on PAM’s Art Unbound podcast between Dr. Dolan and originating curator Karen Haas of MFA Boston; online exhibition coming soon.

Mobile Projection Unit Series: Epic Ephemera (Monthly through May 2021; next events April 24 and May 29 )

In the Portland Art Museum’s outdoor courtyard, the artist-led Mobile Projection Unit presents Epic Ephemera, an outdoor digital installation series at the Museum that reimagines public space and shared experience at an epic scale. An artistic collaboration and curatorial project of Portland artists Sarah Turner and Fernanda D’Agostino, Mobile Projection Unit presents new, experimental, site-specific outdoor projected video works throughout Portland by use of a mobile studio. This series is supported by the Museum and Film Center’s Re:Imagine Artist Fund, an initiative expanding our commitment to supporting artists in a reimagined cultural sphere.

APEX: Sharita Towne (July 31, 2021 – February 27, 2022)

In the Museum’s APEX gallery showcasing Northwest artists, a new exhibition will showcase the work of Sharita Towne. The transdisciplinary artist gained attention in 2019 for A Black Art Ecology of Portland, an initiative she launched to bring together community organizations in support of creating, reclaiming, and redefining spaces for Black art and audiences in Portland. Learn more about Towne’s work and A Black Ecology of Portland in The New York Times. The APEX series is supported in part by The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Endowments for Northwest Art. Online: Watch a 2019 Artist Talk by Sharita Towne at the Museum.

Queen Nefertari: Eternal Egypt (October 16, 2021 – January 16, 2022)

Discover “The One for Whom the Sun Shines,” Queen Nefertari, the Great Royal Wife of Pharaoh Ramesses II. Drawn from the world-renowned Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy, the exhibition immerses visitors in the magnificent palaces and tombs of ancient Egypt, including Queen Nefertari’s Burial Chamber.  Queen Nefertari: Eternal Egypt celebrates the role of women—goddesses, queens, and commoners, and offers glimpses into royal life and the everyday life of artisans through 230 works of art. Exhibition curated by Mr. Christian Greco and organized by StArt. Presented by The Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation/Jordan Schnitzer, with lead support from Exhibition Series Sponsors.

Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, 1889–1900 (October 23, 2021 – January 23, 2022)

Private Lives explores the beautiful, enigmatic, and paradoxical work of Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, and Félix Vallotton, four members of the Nabi Brotherhood. The Nabis were a group of young artists who were inspired by Paul Gauguin and the growing current of Symbolism in literature and theater. They sought to create an art of suggestion and emotion. Private Lives takes a close look at their paintings, prints, and drawings of home, family, and children, or what Bonnard referred to as the small pleasures and “modest acts of life.” Loans from the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Musée d’Orsay, as well as from many additional public and private collections, will feature in this exhibition alongside the rich holdings of Nabi material in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Portland Art Museum. Private Lives is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the Cleveland Museum of Art and Yale University Press. Curated by Mary Weaver Chapin, the Portland Art Museum’s Curator of Prints and Drawings, and Heather Lemonedes Brown, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Cleveland Museum of Art, where the exhibition opens July 1, 2021. Presented by The Laura and Roger Meier Family, with lead support from Exhibition Series Sponsors. Online: On an episode of PAM’s Art Unbound podcast, Mary Weaver Chapin and Heather Lemonedes Brown discuss co-curating a major exhibition during a pandemic.

Mesh (September 4, 2021 – March 6, 2022)

This Center for Contemporary Native Art exhibition will feature emerging Native American artists from across the country who have worked with artist mentors to develop practices informed by multiple traditions and cultural influences. Intergenerational mentoring relationships are the foundation of Native American art in all media, including basketry, weaving, sculpture, and photography. Presented in the Museum’s Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, Mesh will include a wide variety of installations and media. Curated by Kathleen Ash-Milby, Curator of Native American Art.

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism (February 19 – June 5, 2022)

Internationally beloved artists Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) and Diego Rivera (1886–1957) played a crucial role in defining and establishing the avant-garde cultural movement in Mexico in the early 20th century. Their famously stormy marriage reflected their diverging artistic styles: While Rivera’s art projected itself outward, often in vast murals, and concerned itself with the construction of a national identity in postwar Mexico, Kahlo’s turned inward and represented mexicanidad through an exploration of her personal identity. This exhibition from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th Century Mexican Art and The Vergel Foundation will feature many of Kahlo’s most famous self-portraits and rarely seen oil paintings by Rivera, as well as works by other icons of Mexican modernism. Organized by the MondoMostre. Presented by The Laura and Roger Meier Family, with lead support from Bank of America and Exhibition Series Sponsors.

Constructing Revolution: Soviet Propaganda Posters from between the World Wars (July 2 – October 9, 2022)

Constructing Revolution explores the remarkable and wide-ranging body of propaganda posters as an artistic consequence of the 1917 Russian Revolution. This vibrant exhibition delves into a relatively short-lived era of unprecedented experimentation and utopian idealism, which produced some of the most iconic images in the history of graphic design. Bringing more than 100 Soviet-era posters from the private collection of Svetlana and Eric Silverman, Constructing Revolution showcases a number of key figures in the Soviet artistic avant-garde, among them Vladimir Mayakovsky, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and Gustav Klutsis. Organized by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

Black Artists of Oregon (October 1, 2022 – April 9, 2023)

Black Artists of Oregon, highlighting and celebrating the work of Black artists in and outside of the collection, will serve to deepen awareness of the talented artists that have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally. The exhibition will be the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon, often underrepresented and unacknowledged. Beginning in the 1920s through today, the exhibition captures the African American experience particular to the Pacific Northwest. Artists in the exhibition will include: Al Goldsby, Thelma Johnson Streat, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Robert Colescott, and Carrie Mae Weems. This exhibition will be guest curated by artist Intisar Abioto. In Abioto’s own artistic practice, she has been documenting Black figures in Portland since 2013, through interviews, photography, research, and performance, filling the region’s own historical gaps. The Museum’s Re:Imagine Artist Fund is providing the seed funding to Abioto for her research and planning. Lead support provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Create More Resilience (ongoing)

The Museum continues a partnership with the organization Create More, Fear Less that designs creative experiences that connect young people with their deepest creativity, wisdom, and courage so they can more confidently navigate the twists and turns of this world. With Create More Resilience,  five artists created a series of eight resilience-building workshop videos for teachers, counselors, and parents to share with students of all ages. Online: Watch the videos and learn more about the Museum’s youth art experiences with Create More, Fear Less.

NWFC’s Sustainability Labs (Fall 2021) 

The Northwest Film Center (NWFC)’s creative reimagining continues through a new program focused on improving equity, creative diversity, and sustainability in cinematic storytelling. Successfully making a cinematic art form is a feat in and of itself, but sustaining a career in the film and media industry continues to be difficult because of lack of access to mentors, industry leaders, tools, and strategies necessary in communities outside of New York and Los Angeles. The 9-month Cinema Unbound Sustainability Lab, a pilot program that uniquely prioritizes holistic career advancement and sustainability over singular project completion, will act as a catalyst not only for select artists, but for our community and the ecosystem at large. The Lab will welcome cinematic storytellers of all forms—filmmakers, animators, artists working in VR and augmented reality, audio and serialized content—and, in our ongoing commitment to inclusion in media arts, at least 50% of artists who participate in the Sustainability Labs will be representative of marginalized or underrepresented communities (Black, indigenous, artists of color, women artists, trans/nonbinary artists). We will also bring together both NW artists and national artists, uplifting the region’s talent to a global scale and creating long-lasting interconnected cohorts that can support one another now and into the future.