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. Read on for our guide to the city’s thriving visual arts scene, then head to our events calendar to discover even more things to do on your next visit to Portland.
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, while Elisabeth Jones Art Center specializes in works with a focus on ecology and social justice.
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.
Where to See Visual Art in Portland
Explore Portland's visual arts offerings at these local galleries and and museums.
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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
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Elisabeth Jones Art Center
Upcoming Visual Arts Events
Check out our editor's top picks for visual arts exhibitions in Portland.
Being Present: Revisiting, Somewhat Unfaithfully, Portland’s Most Experimental Art Experiment, PCVA
“Portland has gotten a lot of attention in recent years for its thriving arts scene, but few people know about the organization that originally put the city on the art-world map: Portland Center for the Visual Arts (PCVA). PCVA was an artist-run contemporary art organization that brought innovative artists and performers from around the country…
Isaka Shamsud-Din: Rock of Ages
“Portland Art Museum honors a local legend with its presentation of Isaka Shamsud-Din’s vivid narrative paintings, including the recent acquisition that gives this exhibit its title. Shamsud-Din uses his painterly brushstrokes and glowing colors to depict his own personal experiences and scenes of local culture and history, and his murals (also featured in the show)…
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…
The Art of Reading
“Reading may be falling out of fashion in these times of increasingly short attention spans, but books were once a big business, and publishers employed gifted artists to promote their newest titles. The Art of Reading presents gems from the golden age of poster advertising, with color lithographs from some of the most famous names…
Bury the Hatchet: Prayer for My P’ah-Be
Bury the Hatchet is artist John Hitchcock’s mixed-media, cross-disciplinary, multisensory installation. Hitchcock combines his interests in printmaking, rock ’n’ roll, and Kiowa and Comanche history into one visual expression that offers a retelling of the narrative of the American frontier. Bury the Hatchet explores issues of assimilation, acculturation, and indoctrination through oral history and music….
Objects of Contact: Encounters Between Japan and the West
In theory, Japan was a “closed” country to foreign contact from the 1630s until the 1850s, by shogunal edict. In reality, trade prospered through authorized channels. As commerce flourished, so too did cultural exchanges with not only East and Southeast Asia, but also the West. Motivated by the demands of patrons, the availability of new…
Though There Be Fury on the Waves
In 1942, Portland-born photographer Victor Jorgensen enlisted in the Navy. Edward Steichen, the renowned modernist photographer and lieutenant commander who oversaw Naval photography during World War II, selected Jorgensen—a Reed College attendee and editor at The Oregonian newspaper—to serve with his elite Naval Aviation Photographic Unit. Between 1943 and 1945, Jorgensen photographed on board the…