Portland’s art campus is about to feel brand new. After a transformative $111 million expansion and renovation, the Portland Art Museum opens its fully unified campus on November 22 and 23, capped by a free opening weekend – a community celebration years in the making for the oldest art museum in the Pacific Northwest.
The centerpiece is a new addition that finally stitches the museum together: the Mark Rothko Pavilion, a glass-walled link between the historic Main Building and the Jubitz Center, creating seamless gallery-to-gallery movement across the whole campus. The project adds some 50,000 square feet of new and renovated galleries, great halls and public spaces – the museum’s most ambitious renewal in its 133-year history.
Named for the legendary abstract painter who once took classes at the museum’s school, the Rothko Pavilion gives Portland a bright new front door for art – a place to gather before wandering into fresh galleries, community spaces and exhibitions arranged for lingering. For an institution founded in 1892 and long loved from its Park Blocks home at 1219 SW Park Avenue, this is the rare opening that changes how the whole city uses its museum.
Bring the family, bring a friend, and take the long way through the new halls. Opening weekend is free – and Portland’s art heart will never look quite the same again.
Photo: OlympiaBuebird / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
