This list of museums in Portland, Oregon encompasses museums defined for this context as institutions (including nonprofit organizations, government entities, and private businesses) that collect and care for objects of cultural, artistic, scientific, or historical interest and make their collections or related exhibits available for public viewing. Museums that exist only in cyberspace (i.e., virtual museums) are not included. Also included are non-profit and university art galleries.
Name | Neighborhood | Area | Type | Summary |
---|---|---|---|---|
3D Center of Art and Photography | Art | Antique and contemporary 3D imagery, currently closed and seeking new location | ||
Architectural Heritage Center | Buckman | Southeast | Art - Architecture | Website; changing exhibits about architecture and art |
Blue Sky Gallery | Pearl District | Northwest | Art | Photography gallery |
Cooley Gallery | Eastmoreland | Southeast | Art | Website; part of Reed College |
Gallery 114 | Old Town Chinatown | Northwest | Art | website, non-profit artists' collective and gallery in all media |
Hat Museum | Hosford-Abernethy | Southeast | Commodity - Hats | Website; displays a selection of most characteristic styles of past eras; in the Ladd-Reingold House; open for private tours for costumers, fashion and history academics and for millinery students |
Kidd's Toy Museum | Buckman | Southeast | Toy | Includes mechanical banks; trains, planes and automobiles; character toys; police badges; railroad locks, lanterns and related items; early Oregon memorabilia; teddy bears and dolls; and holiday collectibles [1] |
Movie Madness Video | Sunnyside | Southeast | Media | Video rental shop and museum of film history with costumes, props and Hollywood memorabilia |
Museum of Odd History | University Park | North | Fraternal History | History of Odd Fellows and their contributions to the development of North Portland Website |
Oregon Historical Society Museum | Downtown | Southwest | Multiple | State history, science, art |
Oregon Jewish Museum and Centre for Holocaust Education | Northwest District | Northwest | Ethnic - Jewish | Jewish culture in Oregon, America and the world, art, history |
Japanese American Museum of Oregon | Old Town Chinatown | Northwest | Ethnic - Japanese | Website; lives and contributions of Oregon's Nikkei community, located in Portland's old Japantown area |
Oregon Maritime Museum | Downtown | Southwest | Maritime | Located on the steam sternwheeler Portland in Tom McCall Waterfront Park |
Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) | Hosford-Abernethy | Southeast | Science | Also includes the USS Blueback (SS-581) submarine and a planetarium |
Oregon Rail Heritage Center | Hosford-Abernethy | Southeast | Railroad | Vintage railroad equipment, including steam and diesel locomotives and passenger coaches |
Oregon Sports Hall of Fame | Hall of fame - Sports | Closed temporarily, as of May 2008, according to its website | ||
Pacific Northwest College of Art Galleries | Pearl District | Northwest | Art | Campus includes twelve public exhibition galleries, two professional galleries and ten spaces reserved for student and community showings |
Pittock Mansion | Hillside | Northwest | Historic house | 22 room French Renaissance estate situated on 46 acres (190,000 m2) |
Portland Art Museum | Downtown | Southwest | Art | Includes centers for Native American, Northwest art, and modern and contemporary art, Asian art, an outdoor public sculpture garden, and the Northwest Film Center |
Portland Children's Museum | Washington Park | Southwest | Children's | |
Portland Community College Cascade Gallery | Humboldt | Northeast | Art | Website, on the Cascade Campus |
Portland Community College North View Gallery | Far Southwest | Southwest | Art | Website, on the Sylvania Campus |
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art | Downtown | Southwest | Art | Contemporary performance and visual arts |
Portland Police Museum | Downtown | Southwest | Police | Photographs, equipment, uniforms, and documents; run by the Portland Police Historical Society |
Portland Puppet Museum | Southeast Uplift | Southeast | Puppet | website |
Portland State University School of Art & Design Galleries | Downtown | Southwest | Art | Website. MK, Autzen, AB Lobby and Broadway Galleries |
Stark's Vacuum Museum | Kerns | Northeast | Commodity - Vacuum cleaners | Collection of 300 items includes the two-person-operated Busy-Bee (one person pumps, the other vacuums); operated by Stark's Vacuum Cleaner Sales & Service |
VintageTek | Hayhurst | Southwest | Technology | website, historic Tektronix equipment |
Wells Fargo History Museum | Downtown | Southwest | History | Wells Fargo Company in Oregon history; includes a 19th-century stagecoach, an interactive telegraph, a life-size reproduction of a turn-of-the-20th-century bank, and a treasure box used to carry gold long distances. This museum has closed. |
World Forestry Center | Washington Park | Southwest | Industry - Forestry | Forest industry, importance and natural history of forests |
Marie Watt is a contemporary artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. Enrolled in the Seneca Nation of Indians, Watt has created work primarily with textile arts and community collaboration centered on diverse Native American themes.
The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it one of the oldest art museums on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the US. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum became one of the 25 largest art museums in the US, at a total of 240,000 square feet, with more than 112,000 square feet of gallery space. The permanent collection has more than 42,000 works of art, and at least one major traveling exhibition is usually on show. The Portland Art Museum 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 Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) is a private fine arts and design college in Portland, Oregon. Established in 1909, the art school grants bachelor of fine arts degrees and graduate degrees including the master of fine arts (MFA) and master of arts (MA) degrees. It has an enrollment of about 500 students. PNCA actively participates in Portland's cultural life through a public program of exhibitions, lectures, and internationally recognized visual artists, designers, and creative thinkers.
Tourism in Portland, Oregon is a profitable industry that serves many. In 2018, Portland area tourism generated $5.3 billion in direct spending by 8.6 million overnight person-trips and employs 36,360 people who were paid $1.5 billion.
Jeff Jahn is a curator, art critic, artist, historian, blogger and composer based in Portland, Oregon, United States. He coined the phrase declaring Portland "the capital of conscience for the United States," in a Portland Tribune op-ed piece, which was then reiterated in The Wall Street Journal.
Jessica Jackson Hutchins is an American artist from Chicago, Illinois who is based in Portland, Oregon. Her practice consists of large scale ceramics, multi-media installations, assemblage, and paintings all of which utilize found objects such as old furniture, ceramics, worn out clothes, and newspaper clippings. She is most recognizable for her sloppy craft assemblages of furniture and ceramics. Her work was selected for the 2010: Whitney Biennial, featured in major art collections, and has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, in Iceland, the UK, and Germany.
Brad Cloepfil is an American architect, educator and principal of Allied Works Architecture of Portland, Oregon and New York City. His first major project was an adaptive reuse of a Portland warehouse for the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy. Since 2000, Cloepfil and Allied Works have completed cultural, commercial and residential projects including the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Dutchess County Residence Guest House and the Museum of Arts and Design. Recent and notable works include the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado, completed in November 2011, and the National Music Centre of Canada in Calgary, Alberta, which opened in July 2016.
Plazm magazine has been published since 1991 by a collective of designers, writers, and others in Portland, Oregon, United States. The complete catalog of Plazm magazine is included in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Princeton University, and the Denver Art Museum.
The Museum of Contemporary Craft based in Portland, Oregon was the oldest continuously-running craft institution on the west coast of the United States until its closing in 2016. Located in downtown Portland's Pearl District, the museum's mission was "to enliven and expand the understanding of craft and the museum experience."
The Merchant Hotel, also known as the Merchants' Hotel, is a historic former hotel building in Portland, Oregon, United States. It is located at 121 N.W. Second Avenue in Old Town Chinatown. It is a contributing property in the Portland Skidmore/Old Town Historic District, which was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1977. It is one of the few remaining examples of Victorian Italianate, cast iron architecture on the West Coast. It occupies half of a city block, specifically along the south side of N.W. Davis Street from Second to Third Avenues.
Betty Feves (1918–1985) was an Oregon artist who helped shape the development of clay as an expressive medium in the years following World War II.
Le Happy is a crêperie in northwest Portland, Oregon, United States.
Cynthia Lahti is an American contemporary artist from Portland, Oregon, who works in many mediums: "from collage to ceramics, altered books, and painting".
Kurt Weiser is an American ceramicist and professor. His work—explorations of the relationship between man and nature through narratives rendered in vivid color—are described as "Eden-like." His work has often taken the form of teapots, vases, and cups, though he has recently begun crafting globes as well. Weiser is currently the Regents Professor at Arizona State University's School of Art.
Emily Ginsburg is a conceptual artist who lives in Portland, Oregon. She was selected for the Portland2016 Biennial by curator Michelle Grabner. And her work was noted as a highlight of the Oregon Biennial in 2006. Jennifer Gately, the curator of that Biennial, noted that Ginsburg's work, "reveals a deep interest in the signs and symbols of communication, scientific illustration, architectural notation, electronics, and the human nervous system." Ginsburg's "work often functions as a map or code for understanding an aspect of an individual or collective consciousness."
Heidi Schwegler is an artist in Yucca Valley, CA. She is the founder of the Yucca Valley Material Lab, a space for thinking and making. From 2015-2018 she was the Chair of the Masters in Fine Arts Program in Applied Craft and Design, a program jointly offered by Pacific Northwest College of Art and Oregon College of Art and Craft. Schwegler has been included in the 2018 Bellevue Art Museum Biennial, Portland2016 Biennial, the Portland2010 Biennial, and the Oregon Biennial in 1999.
Jessi Reaves is an American artist based in New York City who uses the relationship between art and design as a material in her practice, often making work that operates as both furniture and sculpture.