The Portland Art Museum is set to unveil its massive $116 million expansion and renovation project on November 20, marking the culmination of more than a decade of planning and construction. This ambitious undertaking represents the largest capital investment in the arts led by a single organization in Oregon's history, highlighting the state's commitment to cultural development.
"Post-pandemic, this project is more important than ever to this community and to our region, acting as a catalyst economically and revitalizing downtown Portland and the greater rebirth of our city," said Brian Ferriso, the museum's director. Ferriso, who has led the institution since 2006, recently announced his upcoming move to the Dallas Museum of Art, where he will begin serving as director on December 1.
Founded in 1892, the Portland Art Museum boasts encyclopedic holdings of more than 50,000 objects and is widely considered the only major museum between San Francisco and Seattle. The centerpiece of the campus transformation is the new Mark Rothko Pavilion, a multi-story glass structure that serves as an architectural bridge connecting the museum's original 1932 building, designed by architect Pietro Belluschi, with an adjacent former Masonic Temple that was acquired in 1992 and converted to gallery spaces.
The expansion project, designed by Portland's Hennebery Eddy Architects in collaboration with Chicago-based Vinci Hamp Architects, aimed to rationalize the previously disjointed floor plans of galleries along a new architectural spine. The result is 100,000 square feet of renovated space, with a quarter of that being entirely new construction. "The semi-transparent Rothko Pavilion provides a welcoming central front door for our museum and creates streamlined circulation across all floors of the institution," Ferriso explained.
Visitors can access the Rothko Pavilion from two sides, traversing expansive plazas that are punctuated with sculptures by renowned artists including Ugo Rondinone, Roy Lichtenstein, Anthony Caro, and Clement Meadmore. Alternatively, guests can move through the glass building via a covered walkway that offers views into the lobby and galleries. "You'll see art, people and activations throughout the spaces, no matter if you're on the east or west side or you're just passing through," Ferriso noted, adding that he felt the museum's previous architecture failed to adequately signal its function or mission.
The Rothko Pavilion is named in honor of Portland's most famous artistic son, the pioneering Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970). Rothko immigrated to the city from Latvia at the age of ten with his family before eventually moving to the East Coast to attend Yale University. During his youth, Rothko took art classes at the Portland Art Museum, which gave him his first solo exhibition in 1933 and honored him with a major retrospective in 2012.
"Although my father never spent a long time in Portland after leaving home, he maintained close ties to his family and was very grateful for the new start he got in America," said Christopher Rothko, the artist's son. After collaborating on his father's 2012 retrospective, the younger Rothko was approached by Ferriso, who had secured an anonymous lead donor requesting to name the planned pavilion after an artist. The Rothko family has agreed to lend major paintings from their private collection for display in the pavilion over the next two decades, with the promise of gifting a work to the museum at the end of that period.
The inaugural presentation in the Rothko Pavilion includes two large-scale canvases from the early 1960s in brown, red, and black tones from the family collection, joined by approximately half a dozen loans from other private collections and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The Rothko family also made a six-figure donation to the museum's $146 million capital campaign, which includes $30 million toward the institution's endowment and is now fully funded.
"More than 90% of the money was contributed by individuals," said Alix Meier Goodman, the campaign chair. "They all believed in the importance of Portland as an anchor in the state and saw this as a reason to get people excited about the city again and draw them back downtown." This support comes at a crucial time for Portland's downtown area, which, like many urban centers across the country, was severely impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic and has experienced widespread encampments of unhoused people.
The situation was further complicated by Oregon's 2020 Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, which decriminalized possession of small amounts of drugs, though a portion of the measure was repealed in 2024. "The fentanyl boom fueled a lot of problems here," Ferriso acknowledged. He was appointed in 2023 to a task force of local leaders addressing the economic future of downtown Portland. While the city has recently focused on creating shelters and providing social services to its unhoused population, Ferriso noted, "It has gotten better, but it is not where it needs to be for this city to be realizing its full potential."
The transformed museum aims to attract 400,000 visitors in the next year, a significant increase from its average annual attendance of 265,000 before the pandemic. The museum-wide reinstallation of galleries showcases approximately 300 new acquisitions by notable artists including Simone Leigh, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Pedro Reyes, Carrie Mae Weems (who grew up in Portland), Wendy Red Star and Marie Watt (both based in the city), and Jeffrey Gibson.
The museum's galleries continue to highlight its collection strengths, which include Native American art (particularly from the Pacific Northwest), photography (especially of the regional landscape), and Asian art (notably Japanese prints). Currently on view until January 4, 2026, is the first large retrospective devoted to Yoshida Chizuko, a pioneering Modernist painter and printmaker from Japan.
The expansion's opening also inaugurates the museum's new gallery dedicated to Black artists and experiences in the United States. The gallery is prominently visible through the façade on the ground level and includes recent acquisitions by Derrick Adams, Robert Pruitt, Alison Saar, and Kara Walker, among others. It also features a solo exhibition of new works by Portland-based artist Lisa Jarrett and an installation by Mickalene Thomas, who spent her early years in the city.
Ferriso emphasized the importance of this dedicated space, pointing to the pervasive histories of racism in Oregon, including Black-exclusion laws that discouraged settlement in the state and were not repealed until 1926. "Creating Black spaces is a very important conversation," he said, "and we felt we need to be more overt, more inviting, especially with this audience, given where we are in time." The museum's expansion represents not just a physical transformation but also a commitment to addressing historical inequities and fostering greater inclusivity in the arts.
