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  • Things to Do in Portland
    • Close Menu
      • three women walk through rows of rosesView All Things to Do in Portland
      • Parks & Gardens
      • Kid-Friendly Activities
      • Shopping
      • Food Carts & Pods Finder
      • On a Budget
      • EVEN MORE THINGS TO DO
  • Culture
    • Close Menu
      • a person in bright clothes and high-heeled boots vogues in front of a park fountain, surrounded by manicured rose bushesView All Culture
      • Arts
      • Beer
      • Biking
      • Cannabis
      • Cultural Communities
      • Craft Spirits
      • Food
      • Makers
      • Music
      • Nightlife
      • Outdoors
      • Sports
      • Weird
      • Wine
      • MORE CULTURE
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      • aerial view of downtown area with buildings and roadways, bridges crossing a river to a smaller set of buildings that expand into the distanceView All Neighborhoods
      • Alberta Arts District
      • Belmont
      • Central Eastside
      • Division/Clinton
      • Downtown
      • Hawthorne
      • Lloyd
      • Mississippi
      • Northwest / Nob Hill
      • Old Town Chinatown
      • Pearl District
      • St. Johns
      • Sellwood-Moreland
      • Williams
      • ALL NEIGHBORHOODS
  • Region
    • Close Menu
      • aerial view of the countryside and coastal range with an old rail bridge turned bike and walking pathView All Region
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      • Columbia River Gorge
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      • Oregon Coast
      • Willamette Valley
      • ALL REGIONS
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Katrina Yentch

Katrina Yentch

Katrina Yentch is a freelance journalist, editor, and copywriter living in Portland. When she isn't writing, she's either napping and cooking in the winter or paddling and backpacking during the summer.

A person explores brightly lit, highly textured cave-like structure. A person explores brightly lit, highly textured cave-like structure.
i
A person wanders through the Rainbow Cave, a cave made up of approximately 86,000 upcycled plastic bags, which is the number of bags used around the world in only five seconds. The bags are held in place by salvaged fishing nets, a material that underscores the importance of containment and references an important food source that plastics are contaminating.
Credit: Hopscotch Portland
Culture / Arts / Visual Arts in Portland

Explore Portland’s Immersive Art Experiences

From a “quantum trampoline” at Hopscotch Portland to a larger-than-life troll, get a taste of the region’s immersive art exhibits.

Updated Mar. 24, 2025 4 min read
Katrina Yentch

Katrina Yentch

Katrina Yentch is a freelance journalist, editor, and copywriter living in Portland. When she isn't writing, she's either napping and cooking in the winter or paddling and backpacking during the summer.

Sustained entirely by our creative residents, Portland’s enthusiasm for visual arts excels even on the rainiest days. Massive hand-painted murals add splashes of color to the walls of industrial districts throughout Southeast Portland and downtown while art installations abound across our neighborhoods. Alongside this culture exists a brewing appreciation for immersive art experiences that send travelers on all-inclusive sensory journeys.

Hopscotch

Opened in 2023, Hopscotch is a theme park of immersive art exhibits that further enhances the city’s creative culture. Akin to art attractions like Meow Wolf and TeamLab, Hopscotch is a 23,000-square-foot (7,010 sq m) multi-room gallery in Southeast Portland’s Central Eastside. Upon entering, you can disconnect, relax and appreciate the team’s collection of stimulating visual, auditory and sensory pieces.

People move through a darkened space between large, clear panels illuminated with attractive glowing patterns.

Credit: Hopscotch Portland

The Hopscotch experience begins the moment you step through the door. An ethereal soundtrack creates a calming atmosphere throughout the room’s hallways while several other musicians converge their music with light installations.

As a nod to Portland’s culinary spirit, a thoughtful menu of playful bites entices visitors to lounge in the welcome room before the adventure begins. Developed by Top Chef alumnus Sara Hauman, the menu features things like popcorn with rotating flavors, indulgent mac and cheeses and shakes topped with matcha drizzle or baklava. While the menu is great for the kiddos and kids at heart, adults can indulge too with a constantly changing array of cocktails inspired by Hopscotch’s various rooms.

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Whether bouncing on the Quantum Trampoline — where video projections mirror your movements — or diving through the glow-in-the-dark ball pit, Hopscotch invites visitors of all ages to indulge their inner child without judgment. Introspective exhibits like Walls Within and the Rainbow Cave encourage viewers to think below the surface of the seemingly colorful, amusing arrangements; the latter consists of thousands of salvaged scrap plastic bags and fishing nets.

Weird

Keep Portland Weird is a local mantra, as Portland stands alone, offering unique tastes, sights and experiences you won’t find anyplace else. Do as locals do and embrace the city’s quirky vibes.

Get Weird

Mike Bennett’s Art Exhibits

Visual artist and “public joy creator” Mike Bennett’s cartoon wood cutouts brought light to Portland during the pandemic lockdown of 2020. At the time, Bennett’s front lawn décor delighted passersby walking through his Northeast Portland neighborhood. His whimsical “Bennett Buddies” received so much attention that he built scavenger hunts around them, inviting locals on pandemic-safe adventures to search for the cartoon wildlife creatures throughout Portland. To this day, the city commemorates these animals; visitors will spot plenty of the cutouts on front lawns across the city, urging drivers to “slow down” and appreciate life.

Bennett’s universe of whimsical creatures has since expanded to include Wonderwood Springs and Wonderwood Mini Golf, located in a former bank in St. Johns. Elevate your putt-putt game with nine mini golf holes amid original art and hand-painted creatures. After a visit to the golf course, a treat at the Wonderwood Springs café is in order.

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The café is an ode to all things fantasy, where folks can enjoy seasonal “elixirs” like the Marshmallow Ember Mocha (chocolate, toasted marshmallow, whipped cream) and the Royal Ransom Cold Brew (lavender, honey, cold foam). Find family-friendly eats, including hotdogs, breakfast burritos, burgers and fries and more. Fittingly, their regular free tabletop board game nights welcome players to immerse themselves in the fantastical environment where Bennett’s cutouts decorate nearly every corner of the café.

More Adventures

Explore Portland's Escape Rooms

Escape rooms are fun, collaborative puzzle challenges set in immersive, themed environments.

  • Hour to Midnight – Room Escape Games

    Hour to Midnight’s room escape games feature special effects, innovative puzzles and engaging story lines sure to immerse you and your guests in an exciting, one-of-a-kind theatrical experience. Their banquet room can host up to 28 guests.

  • Escapism Portland

    Escapism Portland is a live-action room escape game. Find clues, solve puzzles and complete tasks in small teams to unlock new secrets and escape the room.

  • Portland Escape Rooms – Portland

    At Portland Escape Rooms, players have one hour to solve interactive, immersive mysteries in historical and fantasy themed games.

  • Side Quest Escape Games

    Side Quest Escape Games is home to the “Shaky Grounds Cafe”, a mobile escape room that helps visitors learn emergency preparedness skills — along with having a great time solving puzzles.

  • Escape Games PDX

    At Escape Games PDX, you’ll make memories by working together as a team to solve riddles and find clues to puzzles in these themed, immersive games.

Roboto Octopodo’s FATHOM

In downtown Portland, there’s a mysterious time ripple under investigation by a strange scientific organization — and you’re invited to discover its secrets. FATHOM by Roboto Octopodo first opened in downtown Portland in May 2024. This pop-up exhibition features whimsical sculptures and objects for visitors to interact with, including a room of infinity mirrors, glowing treasure chests and a 21-foot-long animatronic humpback whale.

Giant Troll at Nordic Northwest

Nordic Northwest is a nonprofit center for the appreciation of all things Scandinavian. Within its spacious, lush Southwest Portland quarters stands a towering troll completely fashioned from recycled materials. Scavengers have scoured the globe via Troll Map to find artist Thomas Dambo’s larger-than-life sculptures, patrolling the forests of China and the islands of the Caribbean. Now, one of these, dubbed Ole Bolle, can be found just 9 miles (14.5 km) southwest of downtown Portland.

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The Portland troll is easily accessible at the center, where visitors can learn more about the construction of Ole Bolle by following the interactive hunt detailed on the Adventure Lab geocaching app. Several events also accompany the troll’s indefinite stay at Nordic Northwest. Troll Trouble invites kids on a cartoon-making adventure through the center, while outdoor screenings feature troll-related flicks. While at Nordic Northwest, you can immerse yourself in Scandinavian culture, dining at Broder Söder, shopping at Nordic Finn Ware and exploring the on-site museum.

Arts, Attractions, For Kids, Museums, Weird

Unique Portland

Check out the art and games that keep Portland colorful and fun.

More Unique
small white box with tiny art gallery diorama is displayed on a neighborhood street

Explore Southeast Portland’s Little Free Landmarks

Walk or bike through Southeast Portland to visit quirky sidewalk art galleries, little free libraries and more.

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Fun and Weird Museums

From the weird to the wonderful, Portland’s specialty museums offer a wide range of exhibits, from educational displays to curious collections and even exhibitions devoted to alternate universes.

Two friends clinking glasses over a large tabletop board game.

Portland Board Game Bars and Stores

Pair your board game night with a crafty cocktail or find a new favorite tabletop game at these Portland board game bars and stores.

Visual Arts in Portland

View paintings, sculptures and other visual art in a wide range of galleries, public spaces and unexpected venues.

Explore more art offerings

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