Portland Art Museum opens $116 million expansion with new Native art focus

The Portland Art Museum just finished a transformation that feels less like a renovation and more like a second opening. A $116 million expansion has woven together three buildings into one coherent space, adding nearly 100,000 square feet of galleries, and in the process, fundamentally shifted what the museum shows and who it serves.

The physical centerpiece is the Mark Rothko Pavilion, a 21,000-square-foot glass structure named after the abstract expressionist who grew up in Portland and had his first museum show here. It's designed to be permeable — pedestrians and cyclists can move through it, and at night it glows across the arts district like the museum is literally opening its doors. But the real story isn't the glass.

What's actually changing

The museum's curatorial team has grown from three people to nine, with several positions endowed permanently. That matters because it means sustained investment in perspectives that museums have historically sidelined. Kathleen Ash-Milby, the new curator of Native American art, is rethinking how the museum displays its extensive collection of historical and contemporary Indigenous work — not as artifact but as living practice.

The galleries now feature over 40 paintings and mixed-media pieces by Rick Bartow, a member of the Mad River band of the Wiyot Tribe, alongside work by contemporary Native artists like Jeffrey Gibson and Wendy Red Star. The museum has also acquired around 300 new contemporary works, deliberately building a collection that reflects artists and communities it previously underrepresented.

The 1927 Mark Building, a former Masonic Temple, now houses the modern and contemporary galleries. The original 1932 Belluschi building — designed by the architect who shaped much of Portland's midcentury identity — keeps its understated elegance and still holds the Impressionist, American, and Asian art that longtime visitors come for. It's not a demolition; it's an addition that doesn't erase what came before.

There's also the Crumpacker Center for New Art, a 2,700-square-foot space for experimental work, and the Tomorrow Theater in Southeast Portland, a former adult venue that's being remodeled into what the museum calls a "home for cultural snackers" — smaller, more accessible events and performances.

Director Brian Ferriso has made clear that the expansion is meant to serve communities the museum hasn't historically reached. The specifics of how that unfolds will matter more than the architecture. But the structure is there now — the space, the staff, the collection — waiting to be filled with work that reflects the whole city, not just the part that could afford a museum ticket in 1932.