The Portland Art Museum (PAM) is an art museum in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. The Portland Art Museum has 240,000 square feet (22,000 m2), with more than 112,000 square feet (10,400 m2) of gallery space. The museum’s permanent collection has over 42,000 works of art. PAM features a center for Native American art, a center for Northwest art, a center for modern and contemporary art, permanent exhibitions of Asian art, and an outdoor public sculpture garden. The Northwest Film Center is also a component of Portland Art Museum. The museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, with accreditation through 2024.
History
Founding and early history Incorporated as the Portland Art Association, in 1892, seven business and cultural leaders in the city formed an association towards the development of an art museum for the city of Portland, then approaching 50,000 residents. Henry Corbett donated $10,000 to the association that funded the museum's first collection (the Corbett Collection), which consisted of one hundred plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculptures. The individual pieces of the collection were selected by Winslow B. Ayer and his wife during a trip to Europe. Curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts advised the Ayers prior to the trip on what pieces to select. The collection was originally displayed at the Multnomah County Library located at Southwest Seventh and Stark streets in downtown Portland. By the time of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition held in Portland in 1905, the Portland Art Association had outgrown its location in the public library and had moved into its own building at SW 5th and Taylor. The first exhibition in the new building featured watercolors and paintings that had come to Portland as part of the 1905 Exposition. Curator Henrietta H. Failing (the niece of founder Henry Failing) organized the exhibition with New England artist Frank DuMond. In 1908, the museum acquired its first original piece of art, Afternoon Sky, Harney Desert by American impressionist painter Childe Hassam, who frequented Malheur and Harney counties in Eastern Oregon with his friend, C.E.S. Wood. Anna Belle Crocker succeeded Henrietta Failing as curator in 1909, where she remained until her retirement in 1936. Crocker was an important early figure on the association and was the first head of the Museum Art School (opened in 1909 and now the Pacific Northwest College of Art). In late 1913, the museum hosted one of its most important early exhibitions. The exhibition featured artwork that had been on display earlier that year at the famous 1913 New York Armory Show, which introduced American audiences to modern art. The exhibition included works by Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Manet, Renoir, and the controversial Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 by Marcel Duchamp. The museum continued to grow during the years following World War I. In the 1920s, the museum hosted two memorable exhibitions organized by Sally Lewis, the daughter of a prominent Portland family. Lewis had befriended many well-known artists on trips to New York and Europe. In 1923, Lewis organized an exhibition at the museum that included 44 paintings by Picasso, Matisse, André Derain and American modernists, such as Maurice Prendergast, Charles Burchfield, and Max Weber. She was also one of 22 patrons who purchased Derain's Tree for the museum's permanent collection. The success of her first exhibition led to her second, more daring endeavor a year later that juxtaposed paintings, drawings, and sculptures from Europe with African masks. Among the sculptures was Brâncuși's A Muse, which Lewis owned and donated to the museum in 1959. The museum's final location opened to the public on November 18, 1932, at the corner of SW Park Avenue and Jefferson Street. The building was designed by architect Pietro Belluschi. It is situated along downtown Portland's South Park Blocks and remains a landmark in the city's Cultural District. It was constructed with a lead gift of $100,000 from Winslow B. Ayer, the same patron who selected the museum's collection of plaster casts 40 years earlier. For this reason, the original portion of today's larger main building is referred to as the Ayer Wing. Belluschi's design was modernist, with an unornamented exterior that reflected Belluschi's belief that the design of the building should emphasize the artwork to be exhibited inside of it rather than emphasize the structure itself. In April 1938, the museum was registered as a tax exempt nonprofit organization. That same year, construction began on a new wing expansion project. The Hirsch Wing, also designed by Belluschi, was funded largely through the bequest of Ella Hirsch in honor of her parents, Solomon and Josephine Hirsch. The new wing opened on September 15, 1939, and doubled the museum's gallery space.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
