On-going, by appointment
Cost: $2 per student
Email education@MuseumofContemporaryCraft.org or call 503.223.2654 x120.

CraftKids asks students to explore the interplay between form and function in craft through carefully looking at the Museum’s collection and temporary exhibitions. Through a 60-minute session, students are introduced to craft by
considering the role it plays in their daily lives. Tours are inquiry- and discussion-based, guiding students as they learn to look at objects in new and meaningful ways. Thematic tours focus on materials, process, identity in craft, positive and negative space, and more.

Reservations are required a minimum of two weeks in advance. Please provide the requested date and time, contact name, contact information, as well as the number and grade level of students.

The insiders view of Portland. This award-winning walk clarifies why Portland is regularly recognized as one of the best places to live. You’ll be smiling and laughing as you hear about early and modern Portland as you experience an enlightened city rich with artwork, parks, bridges, fountains, countless coffee shops, brewpubs, and friendly people. Find out how this area grew from "stumptown" to a modern yet livable city.

The works of local photographers inspired by Oregon architectural subjects will be the focus of the Pittock Mansion’s spring exhibit. Photographers will submit their best choices of significant sites that represent the last 150 years of Oregon architecture. Dramatic imagery will allow visitors to discover some well-known and not-so-well-known structures throughout the state. Structures created and preserved for beauty, utility or ingenuity will be selected for the juried exhibit of more than 30 works, which will hang in the historic Mansion’s 23 rooms.

$7 for adults, $6 for seniors, $4 for children 6-18, free for Pittock Mansion members

“If you can’t get a man to propose to you, you might as well be dead.” - “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale

Fresh from Broadway where it was nominated for ten Tony Awards in 2007, this new musical from Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife) tells the hilarious and heartbreaking story of two indomitable women, Edith Bouvier Beale and her adult daughter “Little Edie,” the eccentric aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Once among the brightest names on the social register, these two women became East Hampton’s most notorious recluses, living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion with their 52 cats.

Museum of Contemporary Craft features for the first time the 17 ceramic vessels granted to the Museum by internationally recognized artist Toshiko Takaezu. Former faculty member at Princeton University, Takaezu is widely considered the first person to close – or nearly close – a ceramic vessel. She combines technical mastery with spontaneous painterly glazes that have influenced decades of ceramists worldwide.

Tues-Sun 11-6
Thurs 11-8

Admission is free

In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits is an exhibition consisting of 56 striking color and black-and-white portraits. From fascinating archival images of tribal leaders, fishermen and American workers, to riveting modern pictures of refugees, city dwellers and urban laborers, In Focus takes visitors around the globe and through the heights and depths of human emotion.

Photograph courtesy of Steve McCurry, 1985 & National Geographic
An exhibition created by National Geographic and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits is organized for travel by the Smithsonian Institution for Traveling Exhibition Service.

The Portland Japanese Garden will host the exhibition Parallel Worlds: Art of the Ainu of Hokkaido and Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest.

The cultures of the Ainu and of the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest have much in common—a deep love of nature, a belief in the spirit in all of creation, respect for plants, animals and other human beings—and much to be proud of in their traditional cultures—a rich artistic heritage and a harmonious environmental and social model that has much to teach the world today.

Like Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest—and most of the great indigenous peoples of the world—unfortunately, much of the art and culture of the Ainu of Japan has been lost with their forced assimilation into the broader mainstream societies and changing political fortune.

Fortunately, enough material culture remained in museum cabinets and private collections around the world to inspire a generation of newly awakened 20th-century descendants of Native people on both sides of the North Pacific, launching a revival of the traditions and techniques that inspired their ancestors centuries ago.

Parallel Worlds: Art of the Ainu of Hokkaido and to Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest looks at this and other historical and artistic resonances between the two distant but interestingly similar cultures in an exhibition of traditional textiles made by artists from both worlds.

The title of the exhibition, Parallel Worlds, refers to the Ainu concept that life consists of two parallel realities—that of the physical world and another unseen, but equally real spiritual world. In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Portland-Sapporo Sister City Association, this exhibition explores the parallels between our two regions that go back to ancient times—to the first people who inhabited these lands on both sides of the North Pacific.

Through this comparative exhibition of traditional textiles by Ainu and Native American artists, it is our hope to celebrate these centuries-old connections and rejoice in the parallel spirit that continues to bring these two places on earth together.