Since long before colonists arrived, Native people have continued to live in communion with these same lands despite their violent displacement through the forces of colonization. This gallery includes contemporaneous works of Native art that reflect their connection to the natural world and also demonstrate how Native artists transformed what they gained through global trade into their aesthetic systems. 

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Conversations in Clay presents a glimpse of the diverse range of directions in contemporary ceramics in Japan. Emphasizing natural ash glazes, sculptural forms, and meticulous surface treatments, it explores the shared language linking potters in conversation. Several pioneering women artists are featured, including Koyama Kiyoko (1936–2023), a trailblazing icon of wood-fired Shigaraki ware, Matsuda Yuriko (b. 1943), known for her irreverent polychrome porcelains, and Kishi Eiko (b. 1948), famed for her laborious, colored clay inlays and geometric forms. The exhibition brings together new acquisitions, most on view for the first time, alongside works loaned from one of the premier private collections in North America.

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This gallery features European and American art in photography, painting and sculpture. It includes epitaph inscription slabs from ancient Roman tombs, a coat of arms, and a reliquary.  The works in this gallery represent the diversity of our community as well as of our collection, and span thousands of years, and many continents and are done in many styles. They also challenge our idea of what we understand by Europe – proud Syrian Romans in togas, for example, speak to us from their tombstones, in Aramaic.

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The group was not assembled unilaterally, however. The Foundation invited the Museum to propose a theme around which a gift would be assembled. Museum staff focused on the Renaissance and selected six subthemes: Unity in Narration; The Rise of Landscape Painting; Revival of Classicism; Interest in Anatomy; From Symbolism to Naturalism in Religious Art; and Portraiture. The Kress team then offered additional works and even purchased some art to give the gift more impact.

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Overview

This exhibition features a concise, chronological display of works by the renowned American artist Mark Rothko. The Museum’s new entrance pavilion is named in honor of the artist, who, along with his family, emigrated from Russia (present-day Latvia) in 1913 and grew up in Portland. Rothko graduated from Portland’s Lincoln High School and took his first art classes at the Museum’s school. He left Portland to attend Yale University, eventually leaving college in 1923 to settle in New York City and pursue art full time. Today, Rothko is celebrated for his important contribution to the evolution of abstract art in the mid-twentieth century.

In this presentation, visitors will take an in-depth look at eight artworks from different periods in Rothko’s career. Early representational work demonstrates his interest in representing the figure as a means to communicate universal human experiences. Paintings from the 1940s reveal his transition to abstraction, starting with Surrealism, before leaving the referential behind for good. Rothko’s embrace of color as an evocative material reaches its peak in two large scale, classic works from the 1950s. At this time, he arrives at his signature style: layered blocks of color that complicate visual perception while heightening emotion and psychological responses.

For the next several years, the Museum will showcase art from the collection of Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, Mark Rothko’s children, to honor the artist’s connection to Portland and his critical legacy in the history of American art.

Curated by Sara Krajewski, Eichholz Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Related events

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Jarrett suggests that the Beauty Supply,salon, and kitchen sink are places undeniably linked to migration and diaspora as surrogate homelands. The geographic locations, aesthetics, layout, products, customers, and economies of the Beauty Supply locate it firmly in this “in-between” place, setting it apart as a complicated site of joy,nostalgia, desire, and unmet need. Jarrett investigates how these relatively mundane places and objects function as dynamic living archives in Black communities and families that accompany us from generation to generation. Places like the Beauty Supply (as well as the people, objects, ideas, and experiences contained therein) are the foundation of the work in this exhibition. Tenderhead refers to a question that she (and many others) vividly remember being asked while getting their hair done as children: “Are you tenderheaded?” Jarrett says, “It’s a loaded question,” and this exhibition offers windows into her reply.

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Internationally renowned artist Pipilotti Rist presents her major installation 4th Floor to Mildness in a West Coast premiere and only second exhibition in the U.S. 

Pipilotti Rist dissolves exhibition spaces through luminous color, moving imagery, and melodic sound. 4th Floor to Mildness immerses us in a soft, aquatically inspired environment, where a film shot underwater plays across two biomorphic-shaped screens hanging from the ceiling. A soundtrack by experimental musician Soap&Skin/Anja Plaschg adds to the ambience with lyrics about dreams, love, and memories as the camera catches glimpses of floating bodies. Two projected light circles move across the room, enlightening it with visceral hues. For Rist, this light represents a “desire to turn yourself inside out.”

Rist creates 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. In the gallery, raft-like beds provide a place for us to rest and share social space as we watch the projection overhead. She asks: “What happens to our perceptions when we don’t have to stand or fight gravity?” The sensation of floating may evoke a sense of returning to an elemental state. For the artist, the work “describes the fantasy of [ourselves] being an organic plant . . . and simulates our dissolution into water, mud, slime, molecules and atoms.”

Originally created for the fourth floor of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, PAM adapted the work to the Crumpacker Center with the assistance of the artist’s team at Atelier Rist; production partner Portland Garment Factory, a woman-owned B-corp and zero-waste creative factory, created the curtains, beds, and bed coverings, and Figure Plant engineered and fabricated the hanging screens.

Pipilotti Rist: 4th Floor to Mildness is curated by Sara Krajewski, Eichholz Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. The exhibition is supported by the Exhibition Series Sponsors, Pro Helvetia, Ronni LaCroute, Contemporary Art Council of the Portland Art Museum.

Acknowledgements

• Ronni LaCroute
• Pro Helvetia
• Contemporary Art Council of the Portland Art Museum
• Angela Summers

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Rick Bartow (1946–2016) was an artist of deep complexity, and his work reflects a complicated, passionate person who still found space for lightness and humor. Bartow’s gift as a visual storyteller takes us on a narrative journey: his self-portraits tell stories of pain, memory, and self-discovery; others reflect on his Wiyot identity, Native history and culture; and his portrayals of beings who walk on four legs, swim, or fly deftly capture their essence.

This exhibition provides a glimpse into Rick Bartow’s extensive body of work, including paintings, works on paper, mixed-media sculpture, and his less well-known work as a musician. Short films produced by the Bartow Trusts are included to demonstrate his continuing legacy and influence within his home community.

The Museum’s collection of work by Bartow only scratches the surface of an artist recognized as an iconic Native American, Oregon, and Northwest artist. We are grateful for generous loans from local collectors, planned gifts, and the Bartow Trusts.

Acknowledgements

Sponsor

• Oregon Cultural Trust

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Though Henry made work throughout her life, with commissions for murals and freelance assignments, she was also married and raising two children. It was not until her divorce in 1964, when she was just past 50, that she began to have more time and space for her studio practice. At that moment, Henry’s scale and ambition toward geometric, abstract painting took precedence, and she began her meditation on the infinite possibilities of geometry and color. She was also deeply interested in the Bauhaus movement. Henry continued in this manner until the age of 90, when she could no longer paint “straight lines and lift the canvases.”

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