Arts & Media❯Museums

Overview

Portland Art Museum invites the community to join a Free First Thursday event, offering free admission to the museum for all, plus a Live Wire event as part of the Literary Arts Portland Book Festival. Visitors can take in the afternoon gallery pop-ups, the evening show, or both!

Free First Thursday + Museum pop-ups

4:30 – 6 p.m. — Free, pre-show, pop-up performances will take place throughout the Museum’s galleries. Performers are poet and rapper Dessa, bestselling children’s author Mac Barnett, Pulitzer Prize Finalist Ed Park, and Portland comedian Mx. Dahlia Belle.

Free First Thursday tickets can be reserved online one week in advance and are also available at the door.

tickets for free first thursday Live Wire Evening Recording

7 p.m. — Enjoy a fully seated, ticketed Live Wire taping hosted by Luke Burbank with announcer Elena Passarello, featuring a blend of interviews, comedy, and music performed live for the audience, then edited into an episode for broadcast to over 200 public radio stations nationwide. Performers are poet and rapper Dessa, bestselling children’s author Mac Barnett, Pulitzer Prize Finalist Ed Park, and Portland comedian Mx. Dahlia Belle. Doors will open at 6:30pm.

GA Tickets are $15. Preferred Seating is $40. Discounts available to Portland Book Festival passholders.

tickets for 7pm Live Wire recording Performers

Dessa is a singer, rapper, and writer who fell in love with language as a toddler—and just never got over it. Now, she works in fields that traffic in words: she’s recorded rap bangers as part of the fiercely independent Doomtree collective, released a live album with the Grammy-winning Minnesota Orchestra; contributed to The New York Times and National Geographic Traveler; delivered a TED Talk on the intersection of romance and neuroscience that’s notched more than 4 million views; hosted 2 seasons of behavioral science podcast Deeply Human (BBC/American Public Media); and published a memoir recounting most of the above called My Own Devices (Penguin Random House).

Mac Barnett, the 2025–2026 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, is a New York Times bestselling author of stories for children. Mac’s books have won many prizes, including two Caldecott Honors, three New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Book Awards, three E. B. White Read Aloud Awards and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, as well as several international prizes. He lives in Oakland, California. His latest book, illustrated by X. Fang, is Tom Nancy: The Sheep Who Swapped Brains with a Boy. From two of the most exciting picture book makers today comes a hilarious trickster tale and Freaky Friday switcheroo story: a sneaky, cheeky sheep named Tom Nancy has a brain swap proposal for an innocent farm boy named Felix that will change both of their lives forever. Laugh-out-loud, subversive, and totally unexpected.

Ed Park is the author of the novels Personal Days and Same Bed Different Dreams. He is a founding editor of The Believer, and has worked in newspapers, book publishing, and academia. His writing appears in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Profound, wily, and beautifully wrought, his new book Three Tenses: A Transmission from the Nineties is a meeting of memory and myth, confession and obfuscation, coalescing to offer a singular picture of creativity in action.

The princess of Portland comedy, best known for her breakout performance on the popular Netflix special Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda, Mx. Dahlia Belle has been compared to a Swiss Army knife—different tools to extract sharpness, softness, vulnerability, hope, and wicked wit. She’s been declared one of “11 Trans Comedians… Funnier Than Dave Chappelle” by Out Magazine, repeatedly featured on NPR, and has written for Cosmopolitan Magazine, The Guardian, The Stranger, and Portland Mercury. Her live performances have included NW Black Comedy Festival, Upper Left Comedy Festival, SF Sketchfest, and an awkward conversation with John Waters and Piers Morgan. In the upcoming live taping of her comedy special Affirmed at Polaris Hall on November 22nd, Mx. Dahlia Belle delivers 60 new minutes of stand-up to celebrate and affirm being human in the modern world through a combination of the wholesome and mundane, anecdotes about house cats, liscivious foibles of the LGBT community, and an unapologetic account of her personal journey with gender-affirming care, all delivered with her trademark free form wit.

About Free First Thursdays

Free First Thursdays at the Museum and PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater aligns with the revitalization of the long-standing Portland art galleries’ tradition of opening their doors for openings, receptions, and events on the first Thursday of each month. In recent months art and culture organizations have joined to bring back this popular activity, including the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education in the North Park Blocks.

Generous support provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program.

Learn more about other discounted and free opportunities.

Meet at 4:00PM, Walk at 4:15PM, the walk is 1.5 mile total out-and-back hike. Plan to meet at Lower Macleay Park - 2960 NW Upshur St, Portland, OR 97210.

Join Third Angle and World Forestry Center for an immersive All-Saints Day soundwalk to Witch’s Castle, featuring a spooky, site-specific soundscape created by local composer Bora Yoon. Grab your headphones, download the soundwalk, and join us under the bridge at Lower Macleay Park as we excavate memory, and bring to life place-based storytelling along the wooded path.

REGISTER FOR THE SOUND WALK

Alberta Rose Theatre is proud to present the legendary Chris Smither.

Born in Miami, during World War II, Chris Smither grew up in New Orleans where he first started playing music as a child. The son of a Tulane University professor, he was taught the rudiments of instrumentation by his uncle on his mother’s ukulele. “Uncle Howard,” Smither says, “showed me that if you knew three chords, you could play a lot of the songs you heard on the radio. And if you knew four chords, you could pretty much rule the world.” With that bit of knowledge under his belt, he was hooked. “I’d loved acoustic music – specifically the blues – ever since I first heard Lightnin’ Hopkins’ Blues In My Bottle album. I couldn’t believe the sound Hopkins got. At first I thought it was two guys playing guitar. My style, to a degree, came out of trying to imitate that sound I heard.”

The 20th release, All About the Bones (release date: May 3, 2024 on Signature Sounds/Mighty Albert, distributed by Redeye) is as elemental as the inky black shadows cast by a shockingly bright moon. Featuring eight brand new Chris Smither songs and Smither renditions of Eliza Gilkyson’s “Calm Before the Storm” and also Tom Petty’s “Time to Move On”, the listener is welcomed into some gothic mansion on an imaginary New Orleans street, and there in the lamplit parlor confronts the band, a minimalist skeleton crew: Smither’s inimitable propulsive guitar and rumbling baritone are joined seamlessly to producer David Goodrich’s carpetbag of instruments, Zak Trojano’s rock-steady, primal drumming, BettySoo’s diaphanous harmony vocals, and the flat, mournful flood of Jazz legend Chris Cheek’s saxophone. Recorded at Sonelab Studios in Easthampton MA by Justin Pizzoferrato All About the Bones has a feel that is somehow baroque and austere at once. In 2026, the independent film The Singers, in which Chris made his acting debut, won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. Directed by Sam Davis, Chris joined producer Jack Piatt and fellow cast members at the Oscars to celebrate. Minors ok with parent/guardian Review our venue FAQ here ALL SALES ARE FINAL. PLEASE, DOUBLE CHECK YOUR ORDER BEFORE PURCHASING. NO REFUNDS. If your billing address is located outside a 250 mile radius of Portland, you will need to purchase tickets either in person or by phone by calling (503) 764-4131, or our office at (503) 719-6055. Thank You!

Internationally renowned artist Pipilotti Rist presents her major installation 4th Floor to Mildness in a West Coast premiere and only second exhibition in the U.S.

Pipilotti Rist dissolves exhibition spaces through luminous color, moving imagery, and melodic sound. 4th Floor to Mildness immerses the viewer in a soft, aquatically inspired environment, where a film shot underwater plays across two biomorphic-shaped screens hanging from the ceiling. A soundtrack by experimental musician Soap&Skin/Anja Plaschg adds to the ambience with lyrics about dreams, love, and memories as the camera catches glimpses of floating bodies. Two projected light circles move across the room, enlightening it with visceral hues. For Rist, this light represents a “desire to turn yourself inside out.”

Rist creates conditions for visitors to come together in unconventional ways so that they might better understand their relationships to one another, their own bodies, and nature. In the gallery, raft-like beds provide a place or visitors to rest and share social space as they watch the projection overhead. She asks: “What happens to our perceptions when we don’t have to stand or fight gravity?” The sensation of floating may evoke a sense of returning to an elemental state. For the artist, the work “describes the fantasy of [ourselves] being an organic plant . . . and simulates our dissolution into water, mud, slime, molecules and atoms.”

Originally created for the fourth floor of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, PAM adapted the work to the Crumpacker Center with the assistance of the artist’s team at Atelier Rist; production partner Portland Garment Factory, a woman-owned B-corp and zero-waste creative factory, created the curtains, beds, and bed coverings, and Figure Plant engineered and fabricated the hanging screens.

JLR Seating Map Notes: For this show, you may reserve individual tables on the map pictured. Note that some tables have limited sightlines as noted. All table reservations include admission.

1. For Table Reservations: Note the relative location of the stage and bar on the map. Then click a table number to see prices, or click "Show All Tickets". Click the + button to add a specific table to your cart.
2. For General Admission tickets: click the "GA Standing" area. Click the + button to add additional tickets. Note that seating and sightlines in the GA section are limted and may be standing room only.
3. Click "Agree & Checkout"

"If this band appeared in New York City, they'd be a sensation!"That was guitar great--and one-time Mel Brown bandmate George Benson's reaction after hearing the Mel Brown B-3 Organ Group back in 2003.

In fact, this true All-star band (all four members are Oregon Music Hall Of Fame inductees) has been a sensation going back to 1997, when they began a 20-year run on Thursday evenings at Portlands legendary Jimmy Maks (The Oregonian dubbed them Jimmy Maks signature group).They've continued their Thursday night tradition at the Jack London Revue for the past 6 years. With a collective resume that reads like a Who's Who of NW jazz, blues, and soul, this group has the talent and confidence to be completely spontaneous --from their blistering solos to their improvised arrangements and segues. No wonder they've thrilled audiences wherever they've played.

Count among the bands fans jazz great Christian McBride, host of National Public Radio's Jazz Night In America. In an October 2021 broadcast, McBride interviewed Mel and played excerpts from a Mel Brown B-3 Organ Group festival set. At one point in the program, McBride exclaimed, My mind is blown!

JLR Seating Map Notes: For this show, you may reserve individual tables on the map pictured. Note that some tables have limited sightlines as noted. General Admission ticket holders note that seating and sightlines are limted and may be standing room only. All table reservations include admission.

1. For Table Reservations: Note the relative location of the stage and bar on the map. Then click a table number to see prices, or click "Show All Tickets". Click the + button to add a specific table to your cart.
2. For General Admission tickets: click the "GA Standing" area. Click the + button to add additional tickets.
3. Click "Agree & Checkout"

Join Dr. Mas Subramanian, the inventor of YInMn Blue—the first new blue pigment discovered in more than 200 years—for a fascinating lecture on the science, history, and future of color. Dr. Subramanian will share the story behind this accidental discovery and explore the role of pigments in art, design, technology, and everyday life, offering a unique perspective at the intersection of scientific innovation and creative practice.

This lecture is now a virutal event.

This program is offered as part of the programming for Anish Kapoor: Dissolving Margins, From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation. This exhibition will be on view at the JSMA at PSU through December 5, 2026.

About the Film

Wildwood is a handcrafted epic fantasy that transports audiences into a secret, dangerously alive world. A girl’s desperate quest to save her baby brother unfolds into a spectacular, high-stakes adventure through a forbidden forest full of enchanted creatures, endearing allies, and formidable adversaries — where an entire hidden realm hangs in the balance. In an era of automation, LAIKA delivers its most ambitious and globally accessible film yet — a bold fusion of human-crafted artistry and cinematic storytelling from the makers of Coraline.

Duration: 2h 19m | Rating: PG-13 | CC and AD Available | Accessible Entrance Available

$9 Adults, $8 Seniors, $7 Youth | OMSI Members receive 50% admission for this screening
Member Empirical vouchers are not applicable.

DATES:

Saturday, October 24 at 12pm, 2:45pm

Sunday, October 25 at 1pm, 3:45pm, 6:30pm

Tuesday, October 27 at 4pm, 6:45pm

Wednesday, October 28 at 3:30pm

Thursday, October 29 at 4pm, 6:45pm

Friday, October 30 at 5pm, 7:45pm

Saturday, October 31 at 2pm, 4:45pm, 7:30pm

Sunday, November 1 at 1pm, 3:45pm, 6:30pm

Tuesday, November 3 at 4pm, 6:45pm

Wednesday, November 4 at 4pm, 6:45pm

Thursday, November 5 at 4pm, 6:45pm

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World (2026) Directed by Sasha Waters Freyer. 1hr 31min. Not Rated.

If poetry had a pop icon, Mary Oliver would be it. Best-selling poet and Pulitzer Prize-winner, lover of dogs and long walks in the woods, queer and out but intensely private—Oliver’s poems inspire liberals and conservatives, atheists and believers, naturalists and urbanites. She was America’s unlikely, contemporary mystic, stalking the ponds and forests of Cape Cod for nearly fifty years in order to open herself—and us, her readers—to the known and unknowable world. Sasha Waters’ beguiling portrait features poems read by Helena Bonham Carter, Steve Buscemi, Stephen Colbert, Lucy Dacus, Jesse Welles, and Oprah Winfrey.

This film is featured as part of Portland Book Festival’s Cover to Cover.

We do not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, and films exhibited don’t necessarily reflect the views of PAM CUT or the Portland Art Museum. In addition to the synopses, trailers, and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on sites like Common Sense Media, IMDb, and DoesTheDogDie.com.

Julián Delgado Lopera reads from his new novel Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You at Portland Art Museum in the Northwest Art gallery (Level 4, Room 402), paired with V. Maldonado, Sala Roja. Presented by the National Book Foundation.

About Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You:

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

From the award-winning author of Fiebre Tropical, an electric, highly anticipated novel set in Colombia’s underground queer scene.

It is a known fact that the queens who refuse their destiny are haunted. Rejection turns itself inward, a bullet to the heart of said queen, and unleashes, per Travesti Lore, a river of curses.

Cloistered in a dreary Bogotá apartment, Ignacio’s light has dimmed, leaving his teenage daughter, Valentina, to raise herself in the wake of her mother Alma’s death. Lonely and love-starved, Valentina aches to discover the details of her mother’s drowning, and for her father to snap out of his depression. But Ignacio can’t. He spends listless afternoons smoking cigarettes in long blonde wigs, telenovelas humming in the background, haunted not only by matrimonial guilt, but by memories of a young man he once loved and betrayed.

From Ignacio’s tragic past emerges the luminous queen of Bogotá’s queer underground, Mamadora Eléctrica, the wise travesti who he first met under the silvery lights of Club Aquario when he was just a shy country boy. With Alma gone, Mamadora steps in as a mother figure to Valentina the way she once did for the girl’s father. But as an expert in Travesti Lore, she fears the worst: that Ignacio’s self-destruction may have unleashed a curse on them all.

From “a writer who is grinding their own colors” (Dwight Garner, New York Times), Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You is a profound and richly imagined story about coming undone.

The short story is a powerful medium of storytelling.This workshop will explore how to get started on writing the short story– thinking through inspirations, exploring ways of writing compelling short story beginnings, and focussing on how to draw the reader in as you move the story forward from the beginning to the end.

This is a free drop in class offered at the Portland Book Festival. All attendees must acquire a wristband before entering the class venue. Space is limited.