Bertie Mahoney/The Mossy Log
After the recent completion of almost three years of major renovations, the Portland Art Museum (PAM) has reformed itself into a veritable cultural hub of the city. I visited PAM once my freshman year before its renovation, and, like many Portlanders, remember a few standout features: the dark exhibits, its small floor plan and an overall lack of a finger on the pulse of Portland. The same could not be said of PAM today.
In a world where museums seem to be near-religious in their self-importance, the possibility for boldness and personality within a fine arts museum seems limited. The character, reputation and size of Portland, however, make this city perfectly suited to these qualities. PAM’s effort to center contemporary art and works made by artists historically underrepresented in museums has set it apart, mirroring the city itself. For example, alongside halls displaying American art, European art and modern art, PAM includes exhibits full of Native American art, Black art, Asian art and Northwest art. The museum’s work to highlight these sections, especially through work from local artists, makers and histories, distinguishes PAM from other museums.
It is the large emphasis on contemporary art, though, that truly establishes PAM as not only a museum in the classical style, but a hub of Portland’s culture specifically. There are several current exhibitions of contemporary work, including a David Hockney retrospective, Lisa Jarrett’s “Tenderhead” and Pipilotti Rist’s “4th Floor to Mildness.” Each of these three shows breaks a convention of the typical museum; it is this disruption that has helped to imbue PAM with the sense of strength, importance and cultural relevance that it needed coming out of the renovations.
Taking up two rooms on PAM’s second floor, “David Hockney: Works from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation” lays out a timeline of Hockney’s life and walks us through the work he made throughout. Hockney, “often mislabeled as a Pop artist,” according to one placard, is well known for his depictions of the natural world, and also, quite a few swimming pools. While Hockney worked in traditional media like lithography and drawing for much of his career, his work after 2010 shifts almost entirely to digital drawings done via iPad. The high-quality printing, framing and exhibition of these digital works makes clear to the museumgoer something that the art world appears to have been slow to accept: digital art is art. A work with the tell-tale brush forms of a digital paintbrush can be given a place in a museum; we do not have to all be etchers, oil painters or bronze sculptors to get into these hallowed halls. The exhibition will be on display until July 26.
With “Tenderhead,” Jarrett “weaves together her interest in migration and tracing lost familial histories to Beauty Supply stores and salons — critical intersections of Black life,” according to the PAM website description of the exhibition. The use of nontraditional materials like Kanekalon hair extensions, foam hair rollers and satin pillowcases places her work in the context of Black culture, which historically has been brushed aside, belittled or destroyed by Western cultural institutions. This exhibition of Jarrett’s work — some of it made specifically for this space — is an example of PAM’s apparent commitment to not just displaying contemporary work and work made by people from historically underrepresented communities, but to uplifting and centering the people, stories and histories behind them. “Tenderhead” will be on display until Nov. 26.
Rist’s installation “4th Floor to Mildness” works to create conditions for “visitors to come together in unconventional ways so that we might better understand our relationships to one another, our own bodies, and nature,” reads PAM’s description of the work. This immersive piece and the effect it has had on me is difficult to describe; I recommend — as I do for all of these exhibits — to visit PAM in person, get lost in the halls, and learn something new about both art and yourself. Rist combines projected videos of underwater scenes with experimental ambient music by Soap&Skin to place the viewer inside her world. Plus, visitors are asked to take off their shoes, enter the dark room and lie down on their choice of several scattered beds, above which the videos are projected. This installation helps to pull PAM away from the art world’s old guard by centering visitor experiences. As well as historic artifacts, Renaissance paintings and marble sculpture (because the museum has plenty of those, too), works from new media and experimental contemporary practices are given this platform. “4th Floor to Mildness” will be on display until Jan. 29, 2027.
These exhibitions are only three of dozens currently hosted by the museum, not to mention several galleries displaying pieces from their permanent collections. To many, museums can seem stuffy, boring, expensive, mainstream, high-brow or otherwise out of the loop. To that I would say: hop on the OtterBus (as ridiculous as that name is), take a short walk to PAM and go in with an open mind. While tickets are still expensive ($22.50 for students), free tickets are not unheard of. The first Thursday of every month is free to all, and if you hold a Multnomah County library card, you can reserve two free tickets through your local library’s website. So find some time between finals prep and pay PAM a visit! I promise it will not disappoint.
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