Arts & Media❯Galleries

Each year, Milagro observes Día de Muertos with the premiere of a new production, altar displays, and community events with the Día de Muertos Festival. The Centerpiece event of the 31st Annual Día de los Muertos Celebration is Marigolds y Memorias, an original devised production inspired by the traveling carpa tradition, in which humor, music, and storytelling come together in a vibrant theatrical journey. Guided by an elder, a younger generation learns o build an altart, the heart of Día de Muertos, discovering the meaning behind each of its elements, from candles and marigolds to photographs, ofrendas, and cherished recuerdos. Through song, dance, and short theatrical vignettes, the altar gradually takes shape as an act of remembrance and cultural inheritance, inviting audiences to consider how traditions are taught, how memory is kept alive, and what is carried forward when we share rituals across generations.

Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a long-honored tradition with roots in Indigenous Mexican culture. Día de Muertos is observed annually in Mexican and other Latin American cultures on November 1st and 2nd as a remembrance of those who have passed. Individuals and families who honor this day set up ofrendas (altars) with offerings to their departed loved ones. Typical offerings include marigolds, calaveras, photos of the dead, and traditional food like “pan de muerto.”

Celebrating 20 years of cinema, culture, and community—a very special milestone celebrating two decades of building bridges between Latin America and Portland through film.

Over these 20 years, the stories have made audiences laugh, reflect, and feel deeply, while offering new perspectives on identity, collective memory, and cultural diversity. What began as a dream has grown into a vibrant community of filmmakers, artists, volunteers, sponsors, and audience members who believe in the power of cinema to bring the community closer together.

This year features the generous collaboration of musician and composer José Manuel Aguilera, who has authorized the use of his song "Confabulario"—from the album *Tinta negra y roja*—as the official theme for this anniversary edition. The official poster for the twentieth edition was designed by Gilberto Martínez and inspired by the work of renowned graphic artist Joel Rendón. Its visual power and rich symbolism reflect the creative spirit and cultural diversity that have defined the festival over the past two decades.

Join Portland Japanese Garden and experience the awe-inspiring artistry of NUNO, the iconic Japanese textile design studio. Featuring vibrant and compelling fabrics produced across eight specific regions of Japan, NUNO’s championing of small-community makers illuminates the breadth and depth of contemporary Japanese textile design. This unforgettable exhibition includes site-specific installations and a hands-on touch wall that will make you rethink your relationship to cloth.

Each year, Milagro observes Día de Muertos with the premiere of a new production, altar displays, and community events with the Día de Muertos Festival.

Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a long-honored tradition with roots in Indigenous Mexican culture. Día de Muertos is observed annually in Mexican and other Latin American cultures on November 1st and 2nd as a remembrance of those who have passed. Individuals and families who honor this day set up ofrendas (altars) with offerings to their departed loved ones. Typical offerings include marigolds, calaveras, photos of the dead, and traditional food like “pan de muerto.”

This eye-opening exhibition introduces North American audiences to the diverse and distinct visual iconographies of Indigenous Australia, which is made up of more than 250 distinct Indigenous nations. Explore this rich and living history of creativity through over 200 works made by more than 130 artists. Drawn exclusively from the collection of Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria, The Stars We Do Not See offers a rare opportunity to experience some of the most significant examples of modern and contemporary Australian Indigenous art. Charting watershed moments in Indigenous art from the late 19th century to the present, this exhibition reveals a rich history of creativity that predates the arrival of the British.

Step into autumn’s splendor as the garden transforms with the colors and textures of chrysanthemums, a flower of nobility and longevity in Chinese culture. Stroll among 81 mum varieties, cascading displays along the waterfall, and sweeping floral sculptures that transform the garden into a living gallery.

From dazzling floral artistry to hands-on learning opportunities, Chrysanthemum Festival is one of the garden's most anticipated annual celebrations—and an unforgettable way to experience Lan Su in fall. Explore this beautiful flower and time of year.

Nov. 5-8 — Nights of the Golden Flower: Immerse yourself in the illuminated works of 18 talented local floral artists and featured designer Toni Tibbits as they interpret this year’s theme, Golden Blooms Upon Autumn Waters. Plus, enjoy gentle music by Lulu Guzheng Studio, dance performances by YZ Dance Academy, floral jewelry-making, and all-ages fun as you wander among glowing lanterns and vote for your favorite designs of the showcase. Sensory Night November 14.

Portland Art Museum invites the community to join a Free First Thursday event featuring free museum admission for all. This unique day includes a chance to explore the special exhibitions and PAM’s transformed campus and reinstalled permanent collection galleries.

October’s Free First Thursday features a special free film program presented in conjunction with The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art. The screenings celebrate film and video work by and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people, offering another way to explore the stories, histories, and perspectives at the heart of The Stars We Do Not See.

Todd McGrain’s original bust of York, the enslaved man who was the only African American member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, was secretly installed on Mount Tabor Park in 2021. It was placed on the vacant pedestal where a statue of Oregonian editor Harvey Scott (1830-1910), a known racist, once stood. The surprising appearance of York, with no artist name attached to the work, is a local example of the protest art being created in the wake of political and social unrest. The unsanctioned installation of the original bust made a significant contribution to the spirited dialogues on American history, systemic inequality, and public monuments happening across the nation.

Made of mere plaster and paint, the original bust sustained damage from several acts of vandalism, prompting McGrain to come forward and offer the city a bronze version of the bust. This Spring, the Portland Art Museum debuted the bronze bust of York, temporarily, as a part of the 2026 Oregon Contemporary Artists’ Biennial: The Price of the Ticket. In collaboration with Oregon Contemporary and the City of Portland’s Office of Arts and Culture, Portland State University conducted a community survey to give Portlanders the opportunity to share their thoughts on where the monument should be placed for the long term.

Join a thoughtful discussion about McGrain’s act of protest and York as a historical figure significant to Portland's history and the wider nation. Led by biennial curator and historian TK Smith, the panelists will include: Todd McGrain, artist of the York portrait; Intisar Abioto, artist and curator who recently curated Black Artists of Oregon at the Portland Art Museum; Eric Fredericksen, the public art administrator of the City of Portland; and Zachary Stocks, historian and executive director of Oregon Black Pioneers.

Día de Muertos: A Celebration of Life is a compilation of artistic installations and art exhibits across the State of Oregon, based on the community tradition of Day of the Dead.

Day of the Dead has grown in popularity around the world in modern times. In the United States, it is known as an entertaining Mexican party. While it is related to Halloween at least in timing and the symbol of the skeleton, it is much more than just costumes and candy.

The project is an exploration of the origins and evolution of the traditional Mexican celebration Day of the Dead. We are made of memories and stories inherited from past generations, and now is the time to honor them. The essence of respect, love, unity and humor infused in this celebration embraces any person, connecting us with the varied forms of love that answer the question of what it means to be human.

Learn how to make four adorable furoshiki bags using silken scarves. All materials provided so you can take home your own gorgeous bag.

Glamour House: Furoshiki Bag-Making Class is an in-person, women-centric event for the general public. Inspired by glamour and sisterhood, this casual, fun class invites you to learn how to make four adorable Furoshiki bags. All materials and light refreshments are provided for this fun class.

One Nation brings together contemporary artists who explore the ideals and contradictions embedded in the American promise. Drawing on the national motto E Pluribus Unum — “Out of Many, One” — the exhibition reflects on how a diverse society strives toward unity while confronting social, political, and cultural divisions.

Across painting, photography, sculpture, textile, and mixed media, the artists consider themes central to American civic life: immigration and belonging, protest and dissent, labor and economic justice, religious freedom, racial inequality, and the enduring power of democratic ideals.

Personal histories and collective memory intersect throughout the exhibition. Portraits of leaders and everyday citizens appear alongside symbolic images of journeys, borders, and shared responsibility. Together, these works ask viewers to consider not only what unites Americans, but also what challenges the nation’s commitment to liberty and justice, and invites reflection on the role individuals and communities play in shaping the country’s future.

Join for a free guided tour on August 16. RSVP here.

What does civic participation look like? How do communities shape the places where they live? How We Show Up explores the many ways Jews in Oregon have participated in public life—from building towns and holding office in the nineteenth century to advocating for civil rights, immigrant communities, and social justice in the decades that followed. Drawing from the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education’s collections, the exhibition traces a long tradition of civic engagement shaped by leadership, service, and advocacy.

Visitors will encounter stories of early Jewish mayors who helped establish towns across Oregon, women who organized networks of social welfare and immigrant support, and lawyers, activists, and community leaders who worked to expand civil rights and democratic participation. The exhibition also examines moments of tension and contradiction, exploring the limits of acceptance and the complexities of minority politics.

Presented as part of the national America 250 commemoration, How We Show Up reflects on the ongoing work of democracy. Through photographs, documents, and personal stories, the exhibition invites visitors to consider how communities participate in civic life—and how each generation chooses to show up.

Funding has been generously provided by the Judy Margles Education and Culture Fund, Craig E. Wollner Exhibition Fund, and Zera Foundation.

The Portland Art Museum is pleased to present the recently acquired two-channel video installation, Do I Look Like a Lady? (Comedians and Singers), by internationally renowned artist Mickalene Thomas. Thomas’s work addresses themes of beauty and identity expressed through the myriad subjectivities of African-American women. Her multidisciplinary practice reconsiders Black womanhood and desire through a queer lens.

In recent years, Thomas has turned to video production as a way to expand her critical investigation into how mass media and entertainment distill the experiences of African-American women into a handful of archetypes. Do I Look Like a Lady? (Comedians and Singers) presents a dynamic checkerboard of moving image footage featuring African-American actors and singers from across the 20th century: from Jackie “Moms” Mabley to Eartha Kitt, Whoopi Goldberg, Whitney Houston, and several others. The video focuses on their individual voices as they express heartbreaking roles, pointed lyrics, sharp jokes, and strong statements of resistance to the dominant culture. The work is a powerful, and often riotous, reflection on the roles of Black women in the United States.

In Tenderhead, Lisa Jarrett weaves together her interest in migration and tracing lost familial histories to Beauty Supply stores and salons—critical intersections of Black life. The artist’s first solo museum exhibition in Oregon features new works and site-responsive installations that activate the abundant patterns, colors, images and textures found at the Beauty Supply. She says, “The Beauty Supply is my art supply store.” It is a site where she accesses physical materials as well as the less tangible memories activated by these materials, so important to her work.

Jarrett suggests that the Beauty Supply, salon, and kitchen sink are places undeniably linked to migration and diaspora as surrogate homelands. The geographic locations, aesthetics, layout, products, customers, and economies of the Beauty Supply locate it firmly in this “in-between” place, setting it apart as a complicated site of joy, nostalgia, desire, and unmet need. Jarrett investigates how these relatively mundane places and objects function as dynamic living archives in Black communities and families that accompany us from generation to generation. Places like the Beauty Supply (as well as the people, objects, ideas, and experiences contained therein) are the foundation of the work in this exhibition. Tenderhead refers to a question that she (and many others) vividly remember being asked while getting their hair done as children: “Are you tenderheaded?” Jarrett says, “It’s a loaded question,” and this exhibition offers windows into her reply.

This installation celebrates prints by Black artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including many recent acquisitions shown for the first time at the Portland Art Museum. The work offers stories of the Black experience in the United States, allowing visitors to trace serious issues as brutal labor practices, as in Kara Walker’s Cotton, and lynching, in Hale Woodruff’s harrowing By Parties Unknown, as well as leisure and joy, evident in the bathers of Emma Amos and Derrick Adams.

Artistic production is another throughline. Viewers can trace the broad influence of Robert Blackburn, the founder of the influential Blackburn Print Workshop, who taught Romare Bearden, among others. Ron Adams honors Blackburn with a portrait. Although working across various printmaking media, including etching, lithography, and screen printing, the artists share a commitment to graphic expression and bearing witness to the breadth of Black representation in America.

The inaugural exhibition in the heart of the Rothko Pavilion speaks to the strong sense of place experienced through one's connection to the natural environment. Drawn from the Asian, Native American, Northwest, and Modern and Contemporary Art collections, Forming Nature, Nature Formed features artworks in glass, clay, metal, neon, and wood that speak to the ways artists from many cultural backgrounds interpret encounters with the natural world in sculptural form. Some works reflect close observation and representation of leaves, insects, hives, and other surrounding elements. Others become abstract expressions of energy inspired by the dynamic forces around and within us. A poetic neon text by Marie Watt serves to ground us in contemplation of the kinship with the environment of the Pacific Northwest and the creatures who inhabit this space alongside them.

Shifting the Narrative: 21st Century Acquisitions highlights Native American art gifts and purchases since the year 2000 at the Portland Art Museum. This broad selection showcases the diversity of the collection including historical works that represent traditional practices, as well as media such as painting, sculpture, printmaking and more. Taking cues from the work itself, the exhibition is organized by theme and media, including sections highlighting basketry, fashion, and photography. Although the collection has long been recognized for its historical works from the Northwest Coast, Plains, and Western Oregon, this exhibition shifts the narrative to a wider array of Native expression, with an emphasis on the present.

The exhibition also includes a section that traces the history of the collection from the first acquisitions of Native American art in 1918 to the present. The breadth of the program and its relationship to communities of artists, visitors, students and Native people will also be explored. As we begin to imagine the future permanent collections galleries, Shifting the Narrative honors our past and welcomes a future where tradition, innovation, and community are celebrated.

Black Arts PDX is a display of ephemera and an extended documentary trailer that foregrounds the history of the Black visual arts community in Northeast Portland. Curated by Dr. Kiara Hill, this rotating installation sheds light on the practices of key figures who were instrumental in shaping the perception of Black arts and culture in Portland. Whether utilitarian or decorative, these materials highlight ways Black artists sought to beautify the city and utilize their technical skills to address the needs of Black people. Black Arts PDX stems from a collaboration between Dr. Hill and Cultural Bearers Archive, Inc., on an archival project dedicated to preserving the unique lived experiences of Black artists and cultural workers in Portland.

CREATE SPACE is an interactive environment within the Black Art & Experiences (BAE) galleries that invites visitors to slow down, reflect, and respond. Designed as a rest area, reading room, art studio, and community gathering space, it supports connection, creativity, and dialogue. Through artist-led programs, hands-on activities, and quiet areas for reading or reflection, visitors can engage with the Black Art and Experiences gallery in a personal, generative way. This first year, CREATE SPACE is activated alongside Conductions: Black Imaginings II, which centers Black performance art and its archives. Both spaces emphasize process — research, writing, improvisation, and experimentation — as essential to the creative journey.

The ancient Greeks loved wall murals and small portable paintings, but most of these have been lost over time. Instead, their art is best known from objects such as ceramic pots and vessels, excavated from rubbish heaps and graves. These ordinary household wares were produced in vast quantity, and some were even decorated by artists of extraordinary talent. Those that survive, often reconstructed from shards, continue to inspire artists and all of us with the stories and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. The stories range from the labors of Herakles to the poet Orpheus, and range in time from Greek antiquity to the age of Pablo Picasso. Here, we can see how later artists have interpreted those eternally relevant stories and themes for their own generations.

Rick Bartow (1946–2016) was an artist of deep complexity, and his work reflects a complicated, passionate person who still found space for lightness and humor. Bartow’s gift as a visual storyteller takes the viewer on a narrative journey: his self-portraits tell stories of pain, memory, and self-discovery; others reflect on his Wiyot identity, Native history and culture; and his portrayals of beings who walk on four legs, swim, or fly deftly capture their essence.

This exhibition provides a glimpse into Rick Bartow’s extensive body of work, including paintings, works on paper, mixed-media sculpture, and his less well-known work as a musician. Short films produced by the Bartow Trusts are included to demonstrate his continuing legacy and influence within his home community.

The Museum’s collection of work by Bartow only scratches the surface of an artist recognized as an iconic Native American, Oregon, and Northwest artist. PAM is grateful for generous loans from local collectors, planned gifts, and the Bartow Trusts.