Noah Beckham 

Trekked from the Great Miami to the Willamette River, Noah collected an MFA from Willamette University in 2023. Since then, they have been making Art for life’s sake, pondering the next river to rest at. Dimorph is Noah’s visual motif, an obsession that is slowly infecting everything they own.

Bridgette Hickey 

Bridgette comes from blue mud earth tenders, people who prayed fiercely, with written words, hands on bodies, with water and song, in dance and ecstatic expression. Her practice includes growing plants, archiving through prose, immersive installations, earth ceremony, quilting as a form of prayer, botanical dyeing, and facilitating story and grief circles in community. Bridgette’s practice is how she listens back to time, her body, and the many others here with her. Bridgette’s work explores fragmentation as map making. She is influenced by her Black, Irish, and Nipmuc ancestral technologies, and a devotion to orienting her attention towards lifeways that protect life belonging by intimately honoring the dead and fragmented. Currently Bridgette is working on the second iteration of Beloved Fragments, now Seed to Quilt a project centered in love and care work between her and Black queers/autists/mad women/dreamers/artists/elders.

The post Conductions: A Conversation with Noah Beckham and Bridgette Hickey  appeared first on Portland Art Museum.

Welcome to the transformed Portland Art Museum! We have completed a major expansion and renovation project that makes our campus more accessible and welcoming to all.

Whether you are planning a corporate outing or a gathering of friends and colleagues, we offer a variety of ways to experience our galleries together. From independent exploration to expert-led insights, choose the path that best suits your group’s style.

Planning a school group visit? Learn more about our K-12 guided and self-guided school tours, and college self-guided group visits.

Group visits

• Groups of 12 or more receive discounted admission of $24.50 per person. Discount will be applied automatically at checkout. Members receive additional discounts–valid membership card and ID are required for member admissions.
• Group reservations can be made for visits Tuesday through Sunday (excluding Museum free days). 
• Up to 40 participants may visit at one time. For groups exceeding 40 people, please plan to stagger your entry times to ensure gallery comfort.
• Advanced reservations are encouraged, and can be made online up to one day in advance of your visit. Limited group tickets are available for walk-up same day purchase at our admissions desk.
• All group reservations are non-refundable, and non-exchangeable.

Private guided tours

• Guided tours are $250 per guide plus admission, with a discounted admission rate of $24.50 per person for groups of 12 or more. To ensure a quality experience, an additional guide is required for every 20 participants.
• Tours are available Tuesday through Friday (excluding Museum free days). 
• The standard private tour is approximately 1 hour; you are welcome to stay longer to browse the galleries, but please make space for subsequent groups if the galleries become crowded. 
• Private guided tour requests are fulfilled based on guide availability and in the order in which requests are received. If guides are not available, your group will be notified within 7 days of your request.
• Private tours must be booked three weeks in advance. Your reservation is not complete until payment has been processed. 
• All private tour reservations are non-refundable, and non-exchangeable.

Our tours may involve extensive walking, standing, and moving between floors. Please let us know any accessibility needs when inquiring about a tour. Learn more about our accessibility offerings here.

To request a guided group visit, please contact our Development office at development@pam.org or (503) 276-4365.

Custom tours

Custom tours and after-hours access are available as a benefit for our sponsors and Patron-level members. Learn more about our Patron membership program here, or contact our corporate relations team at sponsorship@pam.org for more information on available sponsorship opportunities.

To request a custom tour, please contact our Development office at development@pam.org or (503) 276-4365.

Looking for K-12 and college group visits? Learn more →

Questions? Contact groups@pam.org.

The post Adult group visits & tours appeared first on Portland Art Museum.

The post Seed of Chucky with Glenda Danzig & The Missfits!! appeared first on Portland Art Museum.

Glossary of terms

High Solids Polyurethane: A two-component, aliphatic, acrylic polyurethane resin coating. It is designed for high performance protection with outstanding exterior gloss and color retention.
Blanching
Corrosion
Gloss level
Torque
Cantilever

This episode was produced by Jon Richardson with assistance from Emma Ganger-Spivak. Music courtesy of Mark Orton.

The post When an Artwork Needs a New Coat of Paint appeared first on Portland Art Museum.

Tours with visual descriptions, discussion, and when possible tactile exploration of items in the special exhibition, Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal… will be available throughout the day. Watch the Facebook event page and Museum website calendar event for registration links for these tours.

If you have any access needs please contact Becky Emmert, Head of Accessibility at Portland Art Museum. Please request interpreters or captioning three weeks prior to the event.

THIS IS A FREE EVENT

The post Getting a Feel for Art: Tactile Art Pop-Up Gallery appeared first on Portland Art Museum.

Professor Scott Montgomery will trace the origins and evolution of the psychedelic poster in San Francisco from the Acid Tests to the closing of the Fillmore Auditorium. Examining the style, influences, and imagery of posters produced within the countercultural Psychedelic Poster Movement, this talk seeks to shed light on the birth, growth, and gradual decline of this dynamic and exciting art form.

The post Seed to Flower: The Growth of the Psychedelic Poster in San Francisco, 1965–71 appeared first on Portland Art Museum.

• Morning session: 10 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
• Afternoon session: 2 – 4:30 p.m.
• Cost: $150, materials fee: $100
• Ages 18+
• NOTE: Registration closes on April 19, 2026.

Discover the art of storytelling through flowers in this hands-on workshop inspired by the rich visuals and layered opulence of Marco Brambilla’s video collage Heaven’s Gate. We’ll explore how flowers can convey drama, excess, and narrative, transforming seasonal blooms into bold, immersive arrangements.

The workshop begins with a guided gallery walk to see the artwork Heaven’s Gate to spark inspiration, followed by an immersive floral session where you’ll receive all the tools, tips, and a curated selection of vibrant, seasonal flowers to create your own elegant, maximalist floral still life. No experience is required—just bring your love of flowers, art, and imagination.

Led by Portland-based floral artist Bianca Sparta of Colibri, celebrated for her eclectic and extravagant designs, this workshop welcomes every approach—from soft and subtle to daringly dramatic. Together, we’ll respond to the textures, colors, and stories in Brambilla’s artwork to craft arrangements that are as layered, grandiose, and captivating as his cinematic world.

About the teaching artist

Colibri is Bianca Sparta. With over a decade of experience working with flowers, Bianca brings her fine art background to intersect with modern day florals, creating a unique aesthetic and retail environment that stands alone.

The post A Maximalist Floral Design Workshop Inspired by Marco Brambilla’s Heaven’s Gate appeared first on Portland Art Museum.

The awards celebrate visionary, boundary-breaking artists who defy categorization and push the boundaries of what’s possible. 

Past honorees include Guillermo del Toro, Tessa Thompson, Steve McQueen, Phil Lord & Chris Miller, Mickalene Thomas, Sterlin Harjo, and Gregory Gourdet, as well as multi-hyphenates Sarah Sherman, John Cameron Mitchell, Shirin Neshat and Fred Armisen.

In addition to our honorees each year, presenters have included Academy Award winning directors like Bong Joon-ho, Chloe Zhao and Ava DuVernay, actors such as Isabella Rossellini, Jeff Goldblum, Ethan Hawke and superstars like Céline Dion.

The post Cinema Unbound Awards 2026 appeared first on Portland Art Museum.

An image of community appears at the center of the painting for us. Blooming geometric rays of greens, blues, and reds beam outward from a sepia photograph screenprinted on jigsaw cut wood. The photograph portrays a crowd of Black children waving, smiling, or gazing deeply into the camera. Adults are at work behind folding tables registering voters at one of hundreds, if not thousands, of voting drives that took place in city streets around the time the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. A deep red arch frames the group from above, with rays shooting out around them suggesting the sun, or travel through a tunnel or portal. The word “us” appears in graceful italic lettering, cut into a fluorescent yellow plexiglass half circle below them.

This painting on canvas at the Portland Art Museum transposes a mural by Towne, also titled for us, displayed on the top floor of King + Parks, an affordable housing complex at the intersection of Rosa Parks Way and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Northeast Portland. This mural, which sits above a 2nd floor mural of Rosa Parks, and a 3rd floor mural of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., reminds 4th floor residents every day of Fannie Lou Hamer’s words, as they head out into the world and head back home every evening: “Never forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over.”

But this floor, while it celebrates Fannie Lou Hamer, does something different than the murals on the floors below. Those floors center, celebrate, and pay homage to single figures—Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.—with wood etched portraits. This top floor mural celebrates “us”—the artist Sharita Towne’s heartfelt homage to everyday families, friends, neighbors, the young and old, in Black neighborhoods of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

The mural was painted at the end of 2020, one year into the launch of Towne’s project a Black Art Ecology of Portland (BAEP), which she describes as a “transdisciplinary convener and resource mobilizer cultivating networks of creative care between arts workers and partner organizations.” Towne works as a muralist and printer, but she also works in community and placemaking art, though she prefers the term placestaking. Her community and place-based practice synergizes with the efforts of local organizations like Imagine Black, Albina Vision Trust, Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives, and Self-Enhancement Inc., Adre, Prismid, Feed’em Freedom Foundation, and Black Oregon Land Trust, among many others, to rebuild and reroot thriving ecologies of Black communities in the greater Portland area.

Towne has said, “I think of the city as form.” With deep consideration for how Black art lives in neighborhoods, the for us artwork, like many of her works, is just as much about her love for historical photographs and complementary colors, as it is about how we need daily reminders to never forget that we live in a country shaped and transformed by the Black political organizing of the past, present, and future. 

Discussion and activities

1. Towne describes thinking of “the city as form”—meaning not only the physical spaces and structures of a city, but also how people use and relate to each other within those spaces. Walk through your own neighborhood and consider how the built environment (buildings, streets, gathering spaces) either supports or hinders community connection and cultural expression. Write a brief analysis based on your observations.
2. What kind of artwork would you like to create for your community? Think of a place you see in your daily life where you would want to contribute a work of art. What ideas and feelings would your artwork convey? How might community members contribute to the process of creating the artwork? Write a plan or create a small-scale version of your artwork and discuss how your artwork relates to a specific place and community.
3. Consider the lines by Fannie Lou Hamer quoted above and incorporated into the original mural. What do Hamer’s words mean to you? How do Sharita Towne’s for us works relate to Hamer’s words?
4. Towne draws attention to the Civil Rights Movement as a grassroots movement. We might know the names of only prominent leaders. But major political and legal accomplishments, such as the passage of the Voting Rights Act, came about through the courage, commitment, and sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. Do one or both of the following activities:
   • Research the history of voting rights and race in the United States and the movement and events surrounding the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Continue your research through the present moment to understand how the implementation of the Voting Rights Act has continued to change in the twenty-first century. (Students might be assigned different decades to research between 1789 and today, then collaborate to create a timeline and historical narrative.)
   • Create a work of art that honors a person or group of people who are not famous, but are making a positive difference in the world. They could be someone you know or someone you’ve read about. You might create a collage inspired by Towne’s use of multiple media in her work. Use paint, photography, printing, or any materials and colors that speak to you.

Special thanks to Sharita Towne for generously contributing writing and suggesting sources for this poster.

Selected sources

APEX: Sharita Towne & A Black Art Ecology of Portland, Exhibition at the Portland Art Museum, July 21, 2021 – Oct. 30, 2022.

Artist Talk: Sharita Towne, Portland Art Museum, May 16, 2019. (Discussing Mickalene Thomas, Do I Look Like a Lady?)

Sharita Towne: On ‘Black geography’ and community-based art in Portland | Oregon Art Beat, Oregon Public Broadcasting, YouTube, 8:29, January 27, 2021.

Emilye Crosby and Judy Richardson, “Voting Rights Act: Beyond the Headlines,” Civil Rights Teaching. Accessed August 13, 2025.

The post for us appeared first on Portland Art Museum.

Resist COVID / Take 6! is an artist-driven public awareness campaign by internationally renowned artist and Portland native Carrie Mae Weems. Launched in April 2020, the national campaign seeks to draw attention to the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Black, Latinx and Native American communities. The title Take 6! is an allusion to the recommended six feet of separation in social distancing.

To support this public art project, the Portland Art Museum is working with partners across the Metro area to use billboards, social media, banners, posters, and other messaging systems to highlight the disparity caused by existing inequalities, to underscore the importance of preventive and protective measures, and to thank the frontline workers risking their safety during this public health crisis. Billboards in East Portland and East Multnomah County will appear in December and January; a presentation on the exterior of the Portland Art Museum and NW Film Center buildings will run in January and February.

“We’ve all been impacted by COVID-19. It’s an ecological health crisis of epic proportion—an international disaster. And yet we have indisputable evidence that people of color have been disproportionately impacted. The death tolls in these communities are staggering. This fact affords the nation an unprecedented opportunity to address the impact of social and economic inequality in real-time. Denial does not solve a problem.” 

—Carrie Mae Weems 

Carrie Mae Weems is an internationally renowned artist who uses a range of mediums—including photography, video, digital imagery, text, fabric and more—to explore intersecting themes of sexism, class, race, family and community, and the consequences of power. The artist has a deep connection to the Portland Art Museum; the Museum has mounted two important surveys of her work, in 1994 and 2013, and Weems recently joined the Museum’s Board of Trustees. 

Weems’ artistic practice, with its insistence on both technical achievement and radical empathy, creates space for community dialogue and catalytic social engagement. 

“My responsibility as an artist,” Weems writes, “is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and reveals; to beautify the mess of a messy world, to heal the sick and feed the helpless; to shout bravely from the roof-tops and storm barricaded doors and voice the specifics of our historic moment.” 

Learn more at resistcovidtake6.org.

Resist COVID / Take 6! is led by Carrie Mae Weems’s project Social Studies 101, in association with Pierre Loving, and THE OFFICE performing arts + film. The Portland Art Museum exhibition is organized by Sara Krajewski, The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art.

Presenting community partners include Portland Bureau of Transportation, Multnomah County Public Health Division, and The Numberz.fm. The campaign is sponsored by Boeing, Spencer Noecker and Cambria Benson Noecker, Dan Bergsvik and Don Hastler, Madden Industrial Craftsman, and Jim and Susan Winkler. Additional support provided by the Miller Meigs Endowment for Contemporary Art. 

The post Carrie Mae Weems: Resist COVID / Take 6! appeared first on Portland Art Museum.

On the walls and windows of the Portland Art Museum and Northwest Film Center, and on billboards all over town, a prominent artist’s messages are harnessing public art to protect public health.

Launched in Portland in December, Resist COVID / Take 6! is an artist-driven public awareness campaign by internationally renowned artist and Portland native Carrie Mae Weems. Since April 2020, this national campaign has sought to draw attention to the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Black, Latinx, and Native American communities. The title Take 6! is an allusion to the recommended six feet of separation in social distancing.

To support this public art project, the Portland Art Museum is working with partners across the Metro area to use billboards, social media, banners, posters, and other messaging systems to highlight the disparity caused by existing inequalities, to underscore the importance of preventive and protective measures, and to thank the frontline workers risking their safety during this public health crisis. In Multnomah County, about 60% of the people infected with COVID-19 are Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC), while only comprising 30% of the population. Many of the populations affected are immigrants, many of whom work in jobs that put them at higher risk for exposure.

Through a public education partnership with Portland Bureau of Transportation and the Multnomah County Health Division, billboards with the campaign’s messages began running in East and North Portland in December and expanded to other locations in East Portland and East Multnomah County in January and February, supported by federal funds to combat the coronavirus pandemic. The billboards are concentrated in neighborhoods with populations most impacted by COVID based on demographic data, and a number of them feature Spanish-language text. The presentation on the exterior of the Portland Art Museum and NW Film Center buildings was installed last week and will run in January and February.

“The Museum is honored to help bring an artist’s vision to these important messages, and to be part of unifying our city around not only health and safety, but acknowledging the outsized impact that COVID is having on our BIPOC residents,” said Portland Art Museum Director Brian Ferriso.

The partnership with the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) and Multnomah County Health Division complements the agencies’ own public awareness campaign around COVID-19 safety, which includes public service announcements and the website portlandstrong.org, where visitors can pledge to be COVID safe, and Portland strong. The public agencies announced today a COVID-19 safety public education campaign for Black, Latinx communities, with three coordinated efforts including Resist COVID / Take 6!, public service announcement videos, and a COVID Safe, Portland Strong pledge campaign launched today with a video from the Portland Trail Blazers.

“As the local public health authority, Multnomah County has long worked to address the inequities in access to healthcare that have led to disproportionately worse outcomes among people of color throughout this pandemic,” Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury said. “Those inequities are unacceptable, they have devastating consequences, and I am excited to see the county and city working together to make sure everyone has equitable access to services and information that can help save lives.”

The Resist COVID / Take 6! campaign is also receiving important support from Portland Art Museum community partner The Numberz FM. As a radio station whose primary purpose is to create media space for Black people and communities of color, in a city where gentrification has played a significant part in scattering their voices, they are sharing the Resist COVID/ Take 6! messages on air and on social media. For over a year, the Numberz has worked with the Museum to create meaningful community outreach and help achieve the Museum’s goals for transforming equity and inclusion.

Increasing equity through community awareness is central to the Resist COVID/ Take 6 campaign created by Carrie Mae Weems, an internationally renowned artist who uses a range of mediums—including photography, video, digital imagery, text, fabric, and more—to explore intersecting themes of sexism, class, race, family and community, and the consequences of power. The artist has a deep connection to the Portland Art Museum; the Museum has mounted two important surveys of her work, in 1994 and 2013, and Weems recently joined the Museum’s Board of Trustees. 

Weems’ artistic practice, with its insistence on both technical achievement and radical empathy, creates space for community dialogue and catalytic social engagement. 

“My responsibility as an artist,” Weems writes, “is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and reveals; to beautify the mess of a messy world, to heal the sick and feed the helpless; to shout bravely from the roof-tops and storm barricaded doors and voice the specifics of our historic moment.” 

Learn more at resistcovidtake6.org.

Resist COVID / Take 6! is led by Carrie Mae Weems’s project Social Studies 101, in association with Pierre Loving, and THE OFFICE performing arts + film. The Portland Art Museum exhibition is organized by Sara Krajewski, The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art.

Presenting community partners include Portland Bureau of Transportation, Multnomah County Public Health Division, and The Numberz.fm. The campaign is sponsored by Boeing, Spencer Noecker and Cambria Benson Noecker, Dan Bergsvik and Don Hastler, Madden Industrial Craftsman, Jim and Susan Winkler, and Exhibition Series Sponsors. Additional support provided by the Miller Meigs Endowment for Contemporary Art.

The post Resist COVID / Take 6! harnesses public art for public health appeared first on Portland Art Museum.

The Nearer Nature Project was created with support from the Creative Heights Initiative of the Oregon Community Foundation. Additional online content includes a virtual studio visit with the artist that took place on May 27.

Nearer Nature: Worth Your Salt began in response to an impulse that is all too familiar in the COVID-19 era: the artist missed her connection to nature. Interested in cultivating a project that would enable her to explore our complex relationships with the natural world, Jensen carved six sculptures from livestock salt licks. Beginning in February of 2019, she installed them in wild places across the state of Oregon to encourage animal interaction with them. Over the next year, eighteen motion-triggered cameras monitored the sculptures and the surrounding landscape, recording not only wildlife but also the dissolution of the carved salt sculptures and the changing seasons. Footage from each camera was collected monthly, necessitating over 120 “camera checks” and an intricate filing system. Jensen worked closely with a video editor and a small team of assistant editors, assembling the many thousands of 30-second clips into a six-hour video, compressing a total of 24 hours of surveillance footage into a grid format.

Jensen’s work gives us a window into the ordinary life of the natural world. Patterns emerge: changing light, growing antlers, pairings, births, behaviors shifting with the seasons. The mundane becomes beautiful, underscoring our interdependence with the ecosystem and the myriad ways we walk on shared ground.

Each salt sculpture was designed and carved to represent a different part of the body: a Brancusi-esque head, a breast, two hands, a stack of doughnuts (the stomach), and a foot. Jensen placed them throughout Oregon so they would not only connect with the state’s diverse ecology and wildlife population, but also resemble a reclining figure when viewed on a map, symbolic of the human community Jensen hopes to engage through this project, and, she explains, “representing the larger body that we are all a part of.”

Nearer Nature has been activated by community engagement. In the fall of 2019, a five-hour version of Jensen’s video was installed in 12 public places near the original sculpture/camera locations: Oregon Feed and Irrigation, Tygh Valley General Store, the Riverside Restaurant, Neah-Kah-Nie High School, an Oregon Health and Science University Hospital research facility, Skyline Tavern, the San Dune Pub, Wallowa Valley Center for Wellness, and more. This aspect of the project gave Jensen an opportunity to connect with her extended Oregonian neighbors; embracing vulnerability and bridging cultural differences with common interests, facilitating conversations between strangers and encouraging the act of slowing down to examine the natural world from multiple perspectives.

About the Artist

Malia Jensen (b. 1966, Honolulu, HI) received a BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 1989. Her diverse studio practice, encompassing sculpture, video, and photography, is informed by an interest in natural cycles and the fragility of the constructed systems we use to navigate the world. Jensen’s work has been exhibited at The Schneider Museum of Art, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Tacoma Art Museum, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Holter Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, and Mesa Arts Center. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Ucross Foundation, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Portland Garment Factory; and a visiting artist and speaker at Whitman College, Southern Oregon University, Pacific Northwest College of Art, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She has completed several public commissions in the Northwestern United States, and her work is held in numerous public and private collections. Her work is represented by Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York and Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, where her related exhibition Eremocene is on view August 6–29, 2020. Jensen lives and works in Portland, OR.

The post Virtual Residency: Malia Jensen appeared first on Portland Art Museum.