The Portland Artwork Museum (Pam) unveils its $116m enlargement and renovation on 20 November—a venture greater than a decade within the making. It’s the largest capital funding within the arts led by a single organisation in Oregon’s historical past.
“Put up-pandemic, this venture is extra essential than ever to this group and to our area, appearing as a catalyst economically and revitalising downtown Portland and the larger rebirth of our metropolis,” says Brian Ferriso, Pam’s director.
Based in 1892, Pam has encyclopaedic holdings of greater than 50,000 objects and is mostly thought-about the one main museum between San Francisco and Seattle. The centrepiece of the campus transformation is the brand new Mark Rothko Pavilion. This multi-storey glass construction bridges Pam’s 1932 constructing, designed by the architect Pietro Belluschi, with an adjoining former Masonic Temple. Acquired in 1992, the temple constructing was transformed to gallery areas and, in 2005, related to the principle constructing by way of an underground passageway.
The semi-transparent Rothko Pavilion “offers a welcoming central entrance door for our museum and creates streamlined circulation throughout all flooring of the establishment”, says Ferriso, who has led Pam since 2006. (He lately introduced that he’s transferring to the Dallas Museum of Artwork, beginning as director there on 1 December.) One of many targets of the enlargement venture—designed by Portland’s Hennebery Eddy Architects and the Chicago-based Vinci Hamp Architects—was to rationalise the beforehand disjointed ground plans of galleries alongside a brand new architectural backbone, creating 100,000 sq. ft of renovated area, 1 / 4 of which is new.
Guests can enter the Rothko Pavilion from two sides, traversing expansive plazas punctuated with sculptures by Ugo Rondinone, Roy Lichtenstein, Anthony Caro and Clement Meadmore. Alternatively, they will transfer by way of the glass constructing by way of a lined walkway with views into the foyer and galleries. “You’ll see artwork, individuals and activations all through the areas, irrespective of should you’re on the east or west facet otherwise you’re simply passing by way of,” says Ferriso, including that he felt Pam’s structure beforehand did not sign its perform or mission.
The Mark Rothko Pavilion and passageway Photograph: Jeremy Bittermann
Rothko’s household connections
The Rothko Pavilion is called for Portland’s most well-known creative son, the pioneering Summary Expressionist. Mark Rothko (1903-70) immigrated to the town from Latvia on the age of ten together with his household, earlier than transferring to the East Coast to attend Yale College. In his youth, Rothko took artwork courses at Pam. The museum gave him his first solo exhibition in 1933 and honoured him with a retrospective in 2012.
“Though my father by no means spent a very long time in Portland after leaving residence, he maintained shut ties to his household and was very grateful for the brand new begin he acquired in America,” says Christopher Rothko, the artist’s son. After collaborating on his father’s 2012 retrospective, the youthful Rothko was approached by Ferriso, who had an nameless lead donor requesting to call the deliberate pavilion after an artist.
The Rothko household will lend main work from their non-public assortment for show within the pavilion over the following twenty years, with the promise of a gifted work on the finish of that point. The inaugural presentation contains two early Sixties large-scale canvases in brown, pink and black from the household, joined by a half-dozen loans from different non-public collections and the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork in Washington, DC.
The Rothkos additionally made a six-figure donation to Pam’s $146m capital marketing campaign—this contains $30m in direction of its endowment and is now totally funded. Greater than 90% of the cash was contributed by people. “All of them believed within the significance of Portland as an anchor within the state and noticed this as a cause to get individuals excited concerning the metropolis once more and draw them again downtown,” says Alix Meier Goodman, the marketing campaign chair.
The Mark Rothko Pavilion, passageway and West Plaza Photograph: Jeremy Bittermann
Like many downtowns throughout the nation, Portland’s was onerous hit in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic and skilled widespread encampments of unhoused individuals. This challenge was exacerbated by Oregon’s 2020 Drug Dependancy Remedy and Restoration Act, which decriminalised possession of small quantities of medication. (A portion of the measure was repealed in 2024.) “The fentanyl growth fuelled quite a lot of issues right here,” says Ferriso, who was appointed in 2023 to a process drive of native leaders addressing the financial way forward for downtown Portland. The town has lately targeted on creating shelters and offering social companies to its unhoused inhabitants. “It has gotten higher, however it isn’t the place it must be for this metropolis to be realising its full potential,” Ferriso says.
The reworked Pam goals to draw 400,000 guests within the subsequent 12 months—up from a median annual attendance of 265,000 earlier than the pandemic. The museum-wide reinstallation of its galleries highlights some 300 new acquisitions by artists together with Simone Leigh, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Pedro Reyes, Carrie Mae Weems (who grew up in Portland), Wendy Purple Star and Marie Watt (each primarily based within the metropolis), and Jeffrey Gibson. Pam’s galleries showcase the museum’s assortment strengths: Native American artwork (notably from the Pacific Northwest), images (particularly of the regional panorama) and Asian artwork (notably, Japanese prints). The primary giant retrospective dedicated to Yoshida Chizuko, a pioneering Modernist painter and printmaker from Japan, is on view till 4 January 2026.
The enlargement’s opening additionally inaugurates Pam’s new gallery devoted to Black artists and experiences within the US. The gallery is seen by way of the façade on the bottom degree. It contains current acquisitions by Derrick Adams, Robert Pruitt, Alison Saar and Kara Walker amongst others; a solo exhibition of recent works by the Portland-based artist Lisa Jarrett; and an set up by Mickalene Thomas, who spent her early years within the metropolis.
Ferriso factors to the pervasive histories of racism in Oregon, together with Black-exclusion legal guidelines discouraging settlement within the state that weren’t repealed till 1926. “Creating Black areas is an important dialog,” he says, “and we felt we must be extra overt, extra inviting, particularly with this viewers, given the place we’re in time.”
