Visual Arts in Portland
Galleries, public art and avant-garde institutions complete Portland's visual arts scene.
Portland’s thriving and innovative art scene keeps in touch with international trends while remaining true to its Pacific Northwest roots. Events like First Thursday (in the Pearl District) and Last Thursday (in the Alberta Arts District in the summer) draw big crowds, but local galleries, museums and arts organizations continue to churn in the interim. Mainstays like the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art and the Portland Art Museum have full calendars of visiting artist lectures and events that supplement exhibitions around the city.
Galleries and Museums
Holding sway as the premier collecting museum in Oregon, the Portland Art Museum occupies an entire city block in the South Park Blocks. Home to a dizzying array of work from all over the world, it also boasts the Clement Greenberg Collection, a personal look into the taste of one of Modernism’s most powerful critics. Alongside these 20th century masterpieces, the museum also highlights regional contemporary artists at its APEX space, possesses a fine collection of Native American art, schedules regular exhibitions of its collection of world-class prints and drawings and frequently hosts blockbuster events from major collections, both public and private.
Outside of the museum walls, commercial and alternative galleries abound. Some venues have stood the test of time (and the reinvention of the Pearl District), while others are upstarts looking to make a splash with young artists and new media. Cornerstones like PDX Contemporary Art and Elizabeth Leach Gallery show a mixture of local and international emerging and mid-career artists. Their exhibitions run the gamut from photography to abstract painting to more conceptual considerations. Russo Lee Gallery, Charles A. Hartman Fine Art, Augen Gallery and Froelick Gallery all continue this trend, with a mixture of original works from prominent locals and the occasional blue-chip name.
Nearby, younger spaces like Upfor focus on video, new media and installations that speak to Portland’s place in the ever-decentralizing art world. Straddling the area between traditional gallery and alternative exhibition space, PNCA’s 511 Gallery, Adams & Ollman, and Fourteen30 Contemporary stand at the edge of the avant-garde. Meanwhile, the venerable nonprofit Blue Sky Gallery has a long history of advocacy and showing first-rate photography.
Alternative Art Spaces
Beyond the more traditional models, some spaces fully embrace the moniker of “alternative space,” playing host to exhibitions, performances, publications and films. The Everett Station Lofts are a group of combined living and workspaces in Northwest Portland, focusing on small galleries and project spaces with an immersive and community-oriented approach. Other exhibition spaces like S1, Yale Union, and the Portland Museum of Modern Art expand on these ideas to showcase emerging artists and more experimental endeavors.
Disjecta, in the Kenton neighborhood, is less grassroots but works to further a regional understanding of the arts through professional publications, retrospectives and Disjecta’s Portland Biennial. If you want to buy some books, prints or various art objects, while also taking in an exhibition, head over to Ampersand or Nationale, where their galleries thrive alongside commercial spaces.
Exploring all of Portland’s art scene can be a daunting task. Luckily, there are multiple maps, calendars and schedules to simplify your art outing. For public art, check out Public Art PDX. Interested in attending First Thursday? Click through to the Portland Art Dealers Association for a smattering of member galleries and related institutions.
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Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA)
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Portland Art Museum
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South Park Blocks
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PDX CONTEMPORARY ART
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Elizabeth Leach Gallery
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Russo Lee Gallery
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Charles A. Hartman Fine Art
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Augen Gallery
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Froelick Gallery
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Upfor Gallery
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Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) + 511 Gallery
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Adams & Ollman
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Fourteen30 Contemporary Gallery
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Blue Sky Gallery / Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts
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Everett Station Lofts
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Yale Union
Upcoming Visual Arts Events
Handmade NW
Get a head-start on holiday shopping at Handmade NW. Now in its twelfth year, this three-day event rotates artisans from each day, offering shoppers unique items throughout. This year’s market takes place to OHSU’s Center for Developmental Health. The center is committed to finding the root causes of chronic disease and to developing new methods…
Mumvember
During the month of November, Lan Su Chinese Garden will be packed with more than 750 potted chrysanthemums artistically displayed throughout the garden. More than 75 different chrysanthemum varieties will unfurl in all colors, shapes and sizes including: spiders, quills, spoons, regular incurves, irregular incurves, reflexes, semi-doubles, anemones, brush, thistle, exotics and more. Take in…
Noritaka Tatehana: Refashioning Beauty
Portland Japanese Garden presents the art of Noritaka Tatehana in his first-ever North American solo exhibition. Installed in the Pavilion and Tanabe Galleries located within the manicured grounds of the renowned Gardens, Tatehana enchants through his use of traditional symbols of sophistication and beauty with the inclusion of new, never-before-seen artworks created especially for this…
Wild Arts Festival
The Wild Arts Festival is Pacific Northwest’s premier art show and book fair celebrating the natural world. Held each November by the Portland Audubon, the festival attracts nearly 5,000 visitors each year. New for 2019, the popular festival has moved to Pure Space in Portland’s vibrant Pearl District as the festival celebrates its 39th year….
Portland Winter Light Festival
Brighten your February with glowing sculptures and thousands of twinkling lights at the annual Winter Lights Festival.
Volcano! Mount St. Helens in Art
Marking the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, this exhibition explores the overwhelming power of nature and the epic cycles of volcanic destruction and regeneration with stunning photographs, paintings and drawings of the mountain from 1845 to the present day. Curated by Dawson Carr, Ph.D., The Janet and Richard Geary Curator of…
Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott
The first comprehensive retrospective of one of America’s most compelling and controversial artists, Art and Race Matters traces the work of Robert Colescott (1925-2009), who established his career in Portland with the support of gallery owner and philanthropist Arlene Schnitzer, then made his mark in the 1970s with a series of deconstructed art-historical masterpieces that…
Design Week Portland
This annual springtime festival showcases Portland’s creative community, with a week full of lectures, design events and open houses.
Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism
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…
To Bear Witness – Extraordinary Lives
To Bear Witness – Extraordinary Lives will capture, share and preserve the stories of 10 to 12 people from varied backgrounds who left their homelands for safe haven in the United States. Although these refugees had survival on their minds when they first arrived, they jump-started their lives with remarkable determination, finding their way in…
Ansel Adams in Our Time
Oct 17, 2020 – Jan 24, 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,…
APEX: Laura Fritz
Laura Fritz combines an immersive installation and video-based work for her contribution to the APEX exhibition series. Working closely with the architectural space that APEX inhabits, Fritz has created a site-specific installation that responds to various points of corners, walls and the floor, taking signals from furniture that allude to tables, cabinets or other ergonomic…
Being Present
Being Present: Revisiting, Somewhat Unfaithfully, Portland’s Most Experimental Art Experiment, PCVA From 1972 to 1987, the Portland Center for the Visual Arts (PCVA) was a major force in the Pacific Northwest, introducing progressive forms of contemporary art from around the country to Portland audiences. Temporary site-specific installations by major, mostly New York-based sculptors, announced its…
Color Line: Black Excellence on the World Stage
At the International Exposition of 1900 in Paris, American sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois put together “The American Negro Exhibit,” a remarkable collection of more than 300 photographs of African-American men and women, homes, churches, businesses and universities. These photographs were paired with a series of charts and graphs designed by…
Curator’s Choice: Japanese Print Acquisitions of the Past Decade
Retiring Curator of Asian Art Maribeth Graybill presents her personal favorites from among more than 600 Japanese prints acquired during her tenure at the Museum. The exhibition includes works by leading masters of the 18th and 19th centuries, chosen for their exceptional condition; warrior prints, a genre previously neglected in the collection; and prints by…
Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal
Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal … is the first major survey of the work of one of America’s most important conceptual artists. Throughout his career, Hank Willis Thomas (American, born 1976) has fearlessly addressed racism, inequality and bias in bold, skillfully crafted works. Through photographs, sculpture, video, audience-activated digital animation and collaborative public…
Isaka Shamsud-Din: Rock of Ages
Isaka Shamsud-Din: Rock of Ages is an intimate exhibition celebrating the Portland artist’s masterful paintings, rich in a narrative combining personal stories and folklore. Shamsud-Din’s paintings also celebrate and honor individuals by capturing portraits. Tightly composed and with a vibrancy of color, the works invite viewers to be among these individuals and warm settings. The…
No Human Involved: The Fifth Annual Sex Workers’ Art Show
No Human Involved: The Fifth Annual Sex Workers’ Art Show November 8 – December 14, 2019 The phrase “no human involved” (“NHI”) is a slang term that has been commonly used by police to refer to crimes involving the murder or injury of sex workers, drug users, gang members, immigrant and transient folks, with Black…
Norma Bassett Hall: Color Block Prints in Oregon Collections
Norma Bassett Hall was born in Halsey, Oregon, in 1888. Just 18 years later, she entered the School of the Portland Art Association in its first year and by 1929, she had achieved national recognition for her art. Yet, with her local roots and strong ties to Oregon art, her work has never been the…
Portraiture from the Collection of Northwest Art
In the rich tradition of portraiture reflected in Northwest art, there is an exemplary range of individuals and styles of depiction. For this exhibition, the artist Storm Tharp was invited to help select works from the collection through his keen eyes as a fellow portraitist. As he combed through the collection, some themes in portraiture…
Question Bridge: Black Males
Presented in conjunction with Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal…, on view in the Main Building, Question Bridge: Black Males is a project of Cause Collective, a long-term project-based collaboration between Thomas and a team of artists, designers and ethnographers who create innovative forms of public art that spark cross-cultural conversations. Question Bridge: Black…
The Art of Reading
The artistic poster first flourished in the United States in the 1890s. Initially following design trends pioneered in Europe, American artists soon created their own unique style. Magazines were among the first to adopt this new form of advertising, employing outstanding designers such as Will Bradley, Edward Penfield and Maxfield Parrish to advertise periodicals including…
Toughened to Wind and Sun: Women Photographing the Landscape
During the early 20th century, Pictorialist photographer Anne Brigman regularly hiked and camped in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range, photographing the rugged landscape with her 4×5-inch view camera. She later recalled, “I slowly found my power with the camera among the junipers and tamarack pines of the high, storm-swept altitudes.” Toughened to Wind and Sun…
A Kind of Movement, Organized By Jay Wehnert
The concept of the outsider artist revolves around the essential solitude of the artist and the isolation of their creative life from the conventions and influences of the art world. As outsiders, they are not aware of art canons and history, nor do they respond or react to art trends or movements. Their art is…
Chasing Jessie Applegate: New Works by Kirista Trask
Chasing Jessie Applegate, a new solo show at Ford Gallery, is a visual art exhibition of work created by Portland artist Kirista Trask. Through the abstract exploration of place the artist seeks to reconcile her genealogy as a seventh generation Oregonian in relationship to her families long struggle with inter generational trauma. Chasing Jessie Applegate…
Akunnittinni: A Kinngait Family Portrait
Loosely translated, the Inuktitut word Akunnittinni means “between us.” This exhibition chronicles a visual dialogue between an Inuk grandmother, mother, and daughter – Pitseolak Ashoona, Napachie Pootoogook, and Annie Pootoogook. Their work provide a personal and cultural history of three generations of Inuit women and sardonic references to pop culture that now infuses everyday life…
Mumvember
Inspired by incredible Chrysanthemum displays found in gardens in China, Lan Su Chinese Garden presents the biggest and most impressive ‘Mumvember’ display ever held in garden. During the month of November, Lan Su will be packed with hundreds of potted chrysanthemums artistically displayed throughout the garden. In partnership with Ben Auth of Spark Floral &…
The Way Things Fall
New work from Peter Christian Johnson. Meticulously constructed porcelain grid systems become the architecture over which fluid skin is allowed to warp or collapse the structure in the transformative heat of the kiln, exposing the relationships between soft and hard and capturing the moment of entropy embodied in the process. Opening reception November 1, 6-9…
Creative Workshops
Get creative! Radius Art offers opportunities for both the beginning and the experienced artist to learn the basics or build on their current skills. Learn ceramics, painting, drawing, printmaking, leatherworking, fabric dying and more.
Brenda Mallory: Gather Back
In her first solo exhibition at Upfor, artist Brenda Mallory presents new 2D and relief works in an array of materials both found and created, from linen firehose to kiln-formed glass, to addresses ideas of repetition, interference and disruption in nature and human culture. She often combines relatively simple components into complex, abstract compositions, reworking…
Nancy Lorenz: Works on Paper
PDX Contemporary Art is pleased to present new works on paper by New York-based artist Nancy Lorenz. Lorenz starts every drawing with spontaneous, faint and gestural lines and imagery. Building on that initial drawing, the Artist adds metal leaf materials and raised, leafed surfaces. Drawing inspiration from the history of ink painting and time spent…
Rain Spark Seasonal Gallery
Rain Spark Gallery has a new location this year at 310 N. State St. Suite #108 in Lake Oswego. Dates Open: October 24-December 29, 2019. The hours are 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. on Sunday. The gallery is closed Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. This is the ninth year of the…
Blue Sky Ahead: Futures
Blue Sky Ahead: Futures is a new exhibit featuring photography by Ebenezer Galluzzo, Emma Kisiel, Jamila Clarke, Nolan Streitberger, Sam Wrigglesworth and Troi Anderson. Exhibit dates: November 7-December 1, 2019. First Thursday opening reception: November 7, 6-9 p.m. Panel Discussion with Blue Sky Ahead: Futures Artists. moderated by Julia Dolan, Ph.D., the Minor White Curator…
Art Museum Public Tour: Highlights
Explore the Museum with a docent skilled in bringing art to life. Public tours depart from the Park Avenue entrance.
Art Museum: Blind & Low Vision Tour
Explore the museum with a docent skilled in bringing art to life. Tours for blind and low vision visitors feature vivid descriptions of works in the Museum’s collection, with detailed historical information and tactile examples. Tours begin at 1:30 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month. Guide dogs are welcome. Please note there are…
Art Museum Meditation Tour
Enjoy a slow looking tour experience and object-focused meditation. This public tour invites people to relax, rejuvenate, energize and be calm. Using focused breathing and simple poses, the museum encourages visitors to meditate in the galleries twice a month on the first and third Thursdays.
Art Museum Public Tour: Slow Looking
Explore the museum with a docent skilled in bringing art to life. Public tours depart from the Park Avenue entrance.
Artist Talk: Rubén García Marrufo
Rubén García Marrufo is a Mexican filmmaker and artist. Their work focuses on borders, their aftermaths and bilinguality—a work that finds its place between fiction and documentary forms with narratives that are rooted in hearsay and multiple languages. They have produced both feature-length, short and experimental films that have been exhibited in Mexico and the…
Looptworks Retail Workshop Tour
Looptworks uses only what already exists to create new functional products (including upcycled bags, apparel and accessories). Looptworks is committed to upcycling and closed loop solutions. Its intent is to reduce and eliminate waste in its industry headed to the landfill. Participate and witness the Looptworks upcycling production and circular economy firsthand. Tour Schedule &…
$5 After 5
Every Friday evening, the Portland Art Museum (PAM) invites you to play, to have a different Museum experience—a little bit more relaxed, more interactive and more social experience. Admission is just $5 after 5 p.m. Here’s what PAM has in store: Beer, wine, and food at Art Pub in the Museum Grounds Cafe. Occasional special…
Don’t Shoot Portland Printmaking Workshop
Join social justice nonprofit Don’t Shoot Portland as they combine forces with community members to widen the lens of racial identity. This workshop is an opportunity to become a part of the artistic justice movement by creating posters, screen prints, tote bags and more – all in the name of driving civic engagement. Presented in…
Art Museum Public Tour: Prints in the Galleries
Explore the museum with a docent skilled in bringing art to life. Public tours depart from the Park Avenue entrance.
Art Museum Public Tour: All Things Being Equal…
Explore the Museum with a docent skilled in bringing art to life. Presented in conjunction with the special exhibition, Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal… Public tours depart from the Park Avenue entrance.
Mesmerica
In these fast-paced, and often challenging times, music and art can provide us with relief from stress, and provide us with a sense of peace, tranquility and renewal. Experience the magic of this 360 degree immersive art and music cinema experience in the OMSI Kendall Planetarium. Mesmerica is a visual music journey that brings the…
Art Museum Family Tour: Abundance
Explore the museum with a docent skilled in bringing art to life. Public tours depart from the Park Avenue entrance.
Circulation: Artist Talk and Adult Story Time Performance
Circulation, a month-long pop-up library at Blackfish Gallery explores art, book and forest. Join the artists this evening for a lecture by Geordie Duckler and Adult Story Time, a library performance written by Merridawn Duckler.
Bridge Tour
Join up for a morning walking tour that’ll go around, across, under and inside the unique and storied spans that shape the lives in Portland. Strolling along the waterfront, this tour will plan to cross several bridges, pausing at the Morrison Bridge to meet the bridge operator and to see the view from the control…
Holiday Wreath Making
Bring the beauty of the forest home this winter by creating a winter wreath. Participants will be introduced to a variety of natural materials that can be used for home decoration during the holiday season. Younger children will also be able to make a cone craft and other small items. All materials and supplies are…
Arts Council of Lake Oswego’s Holiday Marketplace Returns
Join the Arts Council of Lake Oswego for its third annual hand-selected, all-media Holiday Marketplace at its ARTspace Gallery from November 30 – December 28, 2019. Holiday Marketplace showcases work including fine art, wood, ceramics, jewelry, handmade gifts, ornaments, leather goods, textiles and accessories and is located in beautiful downtown Lake Oswego. A staple of…
Flash Day
On the last Saturday of every month, the artists at Icon Tattoo Studio put out their books of designs for clients to choose from. They only work from their books of designs, and they do not make appointments for this event. Flash Day is a super fun and popular event. Since the artists only work…