Past Exhibitions

Rainbow pixelation over an image of a light-skinned person wearing a red shirt. Most of the underlying image is obscured by the pixels.

Reframing the Fragments The Best We Could Do

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The JSMA presents its third annual Common Seeing, Reframing the Fragments: The Best We Could Do. Works made since 2000 by such artists from the Vietnamese diaspora as Binh Danh, Dinh Q. Le, and Ann Le embody the complex sensations related to remembering and forgetting, tradition and innovation, and trying to make sense of fragments of memory and history.

An intricate paper sculpture resembling abstract, cloud-like formations against a black background.

Paper Weight Works in Paper by Elsa Mora

Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Gallery

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Paper Weight is Elsa Mora’s latest exhibition of painstaking works made solely of paper and glue. Mora’s 2D and 3D pieces, presented in this exhibition, are inspired by the five cognitive faculties that form the mind: consciousness, perception, thinking, judgment, and memory.

A traditional Japanese print depicting a woman in elaborate clothing, performing a dance. The vibrant colors and detailed patterns highlight the elegance of the attire and movement.

Vibrance and Serenity Art of Japanese Nō Traditional Theatre

Fay Boyer Preble and Virginia Cooke Murphy Wing

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This installation introduces the history and performance of Nō theater using selected prints by TSUKIOKA Kōgyo (1869-1927) recently donated to the museum by Elizabeth Moyer and Michael Powanda. Established in the fourteenth century, Nō (sometimes spelled Noh) is one of Japan’s oldest and most revered theatrical forms.

A Decade of Collecting

Coeta and Donald Barker Changing Exhibitions Gallery

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With the appointment of Jill Hartz as executive director of the museum, nearly ten years ago, the JSMA’s collections have grown in breadth and quantity in support of its mission to serve as both a teaching museum and a cultural center for our larger community.

Orange tapestry with an elderly man in a dark blue robe riding a deer-like animal with a pagoda, cranes, and mountains in the background

Reflections of the Cosmic Web Intricate Patterns in Daoist Art

Betty and John Soreng Gallery

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JSMA founder Gertrude Bass Warner lived in China for many years, amassing a collection with special interest in art of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). She bequeathed enviable riches to the museum, among them some with fine Daoist iconography. Next to the teachings of Confucius, Daoism is one of the two indigenous philosophical traditions of China that have evolved over more than 2,000 years.

Oil painting of a young child with wavy hair, depicted in a colorful, swirling style against a green background.

Glenn Brown / Transmutations: What’s Old is New Again

John and Ethel MacKinnon Gallery

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The JSMA will exhibit eight works by Glenn Brown, selected by new and longtime masterworks collectors. Distinctive in Britain’s contemporary art market, Brown revives the art historical past through delicate acts of appropriation that build upon the legacy of Renaissance and Romantic masters. Seven of the works exemplify the paintings and drawings that comprise the majority of Brown’s oeuvre.

A photograph of a window with sheer curtains blowing in the wind, revealing a glimpse of an outdoor scene with scattered items.

Michael Snow: Solar Breath (Northern Caryatids)

Artist Project Space

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Solar Breath (2002) is a 62-minute loop of fluttering curtains that reveal and conceal an idyllic landscape in rural Newfoundland. The work was a result of the artist’s observations of a window of his summer cabin in Canada. Over the years, according to Snow, “a mysterious wind performance takes place in one of the windows, about an hour before sunset.”

Color photograph of eroded black hills

Rodrigo Valenzuela: Work in its Place

Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Gallery

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This unusual exhibition is a striking example of the museum as medium. Rodrigo Valenzuela’s new landscape portraits, his selection of works from the JSMA's collection, and his unconventional manner of displaying these objects, ask us to think about the various possibilities of putting work (labor and art) “in its place.”

A black-and-white photograph of a photographer and a model. The photographer, holding a camera, smiles at the model, who poses with a suitcase. The image is signed at the bottom.

Weegee’s Grief and Joy Selections from the Collection

Morris Graves Gallery

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Drawing from the major gift of eighty-five photographs by Weegee (Arthur Fellig), given to the JSMA in 2016 by Ellen and Alan Newberg, this thematic exhibition will present a selection of black-and-white photographic prints.

A dual photo of a closeup of an artwork that looks like something vaguely mechanical and yet biological, and a photo of a man looking at the same artwork that is hung on the wall.

Discursive

Artist Project Space

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Discursive features work—ranging from functional to sculptural, from performance to site-specific—created by UO faculty and visiting artists who participated in the 2016 Summer Craft Forum at the UO. During this two-week event, the participants – all of whom work in craft media, such as ceramics, metalsmithing, fibers, and printmaking – occupied UO studios to make art.

A portrait of a woman lit with red and blue lights creating dark shadows and vibrant colors.

Don’t Touch My Hair Expressions of Identity and Community

Education Corridor

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This exhibition investigates the politics of hair, racialized beauty standards, hair rituals, and the differences in expectations between men and women with regard to hair. Especially relevant in the current politically and culturally charged climate and relevant to issues of access, equity, and inclusion, Don’t Touch My Hair explores how beauty is represented within and outside one’s community.

Black and white photograph of a man with glasses, deep in thought, sitting at a desk with bookshelves in the background.

Herman Brookman: Visualizing the Sacred

Focus Gallery

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Twentieth-century architect Herman Brookman (1891-1973) designed several of Oregon’s most recognizable landmark structures. Organized by and first presented at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE) in Portland in summer 2017, this exhibition of forty drawings focuses on one of Brookman’s masterpieces, Temple Beth Israel in Portland.

Old black and white photograph of a stone building in the snow viewed from a lower vantage point.

En Noir et Blanc: Early French Photography

John and Ethel MacKinnon Gallery

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This exhibition highlights selections from the European collection by showcasing fourteen black-and-white works by some of the leading figures in the history of photography. The works on view span the period from 1851 through 1969, from the amateur photographer and Pictorialist Eduard Loydreau’s Hangars sous la neige to the documentary realism of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s snapshot Rue Mouffetard.

A triptych of floating islands with various green foliage, set against a white background with textured blue waves.

Keith Achepohl: Vision of Nature/Vessel of Beauty

Coeta and Donald Barker Changing Exhibitions Gallery

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This extensive body of work in painting, drawing, and collage by Eugene, Oregon-based artist Keith Achepohl was inspired by three weeks spent at the Morris Graves Foundation Artist Residency in 2011.

Painting in muted colors of a square vessel with rounded feet and raised, sloping handles

Morris Graves Layers of Time

Morris Graves Gallery

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In recognition of the importance of Morris Graves’s work and home to Keith Achepohl, we asked Achepohl if he would curate a companion exhibition. This selection, from more than 500 drawings by Graves (American, 1910-2001) in our collection, celebrates Graves’s symbolic and highly personal use of vessel imagery over the course of his life.