Portland Art Museum | The Official Guide to Portland

The oldest art museum in the Northwest delights visitors with its permanent collection, sculpture garden and frequent major exhibitions.

Emilly Prado

Emilly Prado is a writer, award-winning journalist and consultant living in Portland. Read More

The Portland Art Museum (PAM) has been a hub for artistic celebration and culture since its 1892 founding and continues to evolve.

Tips for Visiting the Portland Art Museum

What is the most famous piece at the Portland Art Museum?

The Portland Art Museum has several strong collections featuring thousands of talented artists. Vincent Van Gogh’s Ox-Cart painting (1884) — one of Van Gogh’s earliest works — is one of the museum’s most valuable and well-known artworks. Other notable pieces include Claude Monet’s Waterlilies (1914), Kehinde Wiley’s Likunt Daniel Ailin (2013), and work by famous artists such as Ansel Adams, Pierre Renoir, and Diego Rivera.

What is the Portland Art Museum known for?

The Portland Art Museum (PAM) is the largest museum in Oregon, with robust, diverse permanent collections and large graphic art and silver collections. PAM is also known for hosting many major visiting exhibitions.

Is the Portland Art Museum accessible for people who use wheelchairs?

Yes, all galleries, restrooms and drinking fountains are wheelchair accessible. The museum also offers wheelchairs and walkers on a first-come, first-served basis. Additional information can be found on the museum accessibility page.

When can I visit the Portland Art Museum?

The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Holiday closures include Jan. 1, Jul. 4, Thanksgiving (Nov. 28, 2024), and Dec. 25.

Where is the Portland Art Museum?

The Portland Art Museum is a two-block campus at 1219 SW Park Ave. Portland, Oregon 97205. It is in the South Park Blocks in downtown Portland’s cultural district.

How big is the Portland Art Museum collection?

The Portland Art Museum’s permanent collection has over 42,000 objects. Additional rotating artworks are showcased during special and touring exhibitions.

Is there parking available?

On-street metered parking (90-minute, 2-hour and 5-hour) is available at $2.20 per hour Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 7 p.m., unless otherwise posted. On Sundays before 1 p.m. and on designated holidays, on-street parking is free.

The closest private lot is Central City Parking at SW 10th and Main.

Learn more about parking options with our guide to parking in Portland.

What kind of art is in the Portland Art Museum?

The Portland Art Museum’s collections span ancient and contemporary times across many mediums. Visitors can browse Native American, Asian, African, European, Pre-Columbian, and American collections in numerous galleries and even enjoy the arts outdoors in the public sculpture garden.

How much are tickets to the Portland Art Museum?

Admission is $25 for adults and $22 for seniors and college students (with student ID). Entry is free for children ages 17 and younger, veterans and active-duty military (with ID), and Portland Art Museum members. The museum also hosts Free Quarterly Museum Days and other special free and discount days.

Special exhibition and program fees may apply.

Details are subject to change; please check the Portland Art Museum website for current information.

Does the Portland Art Museum have a cafe?

Portland Art Museum History and Campus

a large brick building, the Portland Art Museum, near a pedestrian crosswalk — The Portland Art Museum, located in two historic buildings on Portland’s South Park Blocks, is central to the city’s cultural district and houses a large and wide-ranging art collection.

Today, the Portland Art Museum spans 2.5 sweeping city blocks spread among two primary buildings. Visitors of all ages can wander through the innovative gallery displays, stocking up on artsy goods at the gift shop, or perhaps resting on sleek benches with sketchbooks in hand. As one of the largest museums on the West Coast, PAM eagerly welcomes its visitors — more than 350,000 annually — but in the beginning, the scale was smaller. The first collection, an estimated 100 plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculptures, was displayed in the museum’s original location: a section of a public library several blocks from the current campus.

As the collections, public interest, and patronage alike grew, the PAM campus continued to expand and remains an iconic destination amid the idyllic South Park Blocks (a gorgeous tree-lined green space that served as Portland’s first public park in the mid-1800s.) By 1978, the Northwest Film Study Center (recently renamed PAM Center for an Untold Tomorrow) was incorporated into the museum. The Mark Building, a former Masonic Temple, was added in 2005 to house numerous administrative and curatorial offices, event spaces, the Crumpacker Family Library, which boasts around 33,000 volumes, and the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art.

In 2023, a major renovation project began to modernize the grounds, increase accessibility, and expand the campus to include several new features, including the Rothko Pavilion. Although the museum’s permanent collections are closed for renovations for the duration, exciting rotating exhibitions will remain open through the project completion date of mid-2025.

Planning Your Visit

Exhibitions

Please note: the permanent collections will be inaccessible due to construction until mid-2025, but rotating exhibitions will be open to the public.

Permanent Collection

Visitors view an installation at the Portland Art Museum — The renowned Portland Art Museum is the oldest museum in the Pacific Northwest. Located in the heart of downtown’s Cultural District, the museum’s campus includes an outdoor sculpture court, permanent galleries and special exhibitions.

The Portland Art Museum’s permanent collections are shaped by several geographic areas, mediums and communities spanning two millennia and include paintings, sculptures, ceramics, prints, drawings, objects, and more. The permanent collections, browseable online, are categorized into American art, Asian art, European art, graphic arts, modern and contemporary art, Native American art, Northwest art, photography, and silver.

The multi-story Native American art collection, housed in the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Center for Native American Art within PAM, has a sizable collection of more than 3500 artworks created by at least 200 tribal communities from the Americas. In late 2015, the museum also added the Center for Contemporary Native Art gallery to showcase the breadth of art by renowned modern-day Native American artists such as James Lavadour, Allan Houser, Maria Martinez, Wendy Red Star, and Marie Watt. During the 2024-2025 construction, PAM curator Cathleen Ash Milby will work with native communities to reimagine PAM’s galleries and exhibition spaces for Native American art. When the museum reopens in 2025, visitors can enjoy PAM’s Native art collection via special exhibitions while the museum wraps up a permanent gallery space in collaboration with Native tribes.

Rotating Exhibitions

a woman stands in an art museum — Sarah Sabino viewing her art installation in the AUX/MUTE Gallery in Portland Art Museum.

At PAM, several special exhibitions are presented to the public, rotating throughout the year. Major touring retrospectives like Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism and Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe join groundbreaking collaborations with local community artists at the museum. These include Black Artists of Oregon (2024), curated by multi-disciplinary artist and journalist Intisar Abioto and the AUX/MUTE Gallery located at PAM CUT (which is presented by Oregon’s only Black-led radio station, The Numberz FM.)

Exhibitions on view in 2024 include Throughlines: Connections in the Collection, which uniquely pairs artworks across themes as opposed to cultural region and time, Monet to Matisse: French Moderns and Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm.

Free & Nearly Free

Some of the best things to do in Portland are totally free. Connect with nature, discover local artists or learn something new.

PAM CUT

The Portland Art Museum’s Center for an Untold Tomorrow (PAM CUT) was unveiled in 2022 but was born from a rich five-decade history as the Northwest Film Center. The new name formally marks the museum’s creative pivot, expanding its scope beyond solely short and feature films to include multimedia arts such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

While PAM CUT’s headquarters undergo construction to expand viewing spaces and concessions through mid-2025, including the Whitsell Auditorium, visitors can still enjoy screenings and multimedia experiences offsite at the newly launched Tomorrow Theater, which opened in 2023 in Southeast Portland’s Division neighborhood.

two people looking at artwork in a gallery

Oregon Contemporary

In North Portland find visual art installations and performance art to collaborations with bands, chefs and mixologists, with international curators and partnerships with Oregon art makers, Oregon Contemporary is the cutting edge of visual arts.

three people standing near a food cart carrying books

The Portland Book Festival

Portland Book Festival (formerly “Wordstock”) returns every November with an impressive (and extensive) lineup of local and national authors.

Time-Based Art (TBA) Festival

Portland’s Time-Based Art Festival (TBA) returns every September with 10 days of boundary-pushing performances, visual art and projects that defy categorization.

Portland Art Museum Events and Activities

a group of children participate in arts and crafts activities at the Portland Art Museum — The Portland Art Museum’s family day events help visitors of all ages connect with the museum’s collections in new ways.

The Portland Art Museum hosts ongoing programming, including tours, in-gallery curator conversations, family- and educator-centered talks, interactive classes and workshops, and more. The free Bloomberg Connects app provides a digital guide to PAM, while the online calendar lists upcoming artist talks and events.

The Portland Art Museum also serves as the primary venue for the annual Portland Book Festival. In addition to panels, signings and author conversations, the pop-up author reading series features writers reading in front of artworks throughout the galleries. Be sure to check the online calendar before going as some events may be on hiatus during construction.

Museums

Portland is known for its rich creative community, and DIY makers. From these established museums that showcase the greatest fine artists, to the mailbox-sized galleries of passions, Portland displays all kinds of art and curiosities.

Saturday, May 25, 2024

Journey to the Future

Join the Portland Art Museum for a cutting-edge workshop designed for families with kids ages 11+ wh…

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