Past Exhibitions

Drawn from the permanent collections of the JSMA and Knight Law Center, this exhibition explores the paintings of Catalan-American artist Pierre Daura through his answers to a survey conducted in 1953 by Surrealist poet and founder, André Breton, about the connection between art and magic.

The JSMA and Eugene Symphony Association celebrate an innovative collaboration with four Oregon visual artists in response to Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)’s orchestral masterpiece Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Weber. Mika Aono, Anna Fidler, Andrew Myers, and Julia Oldham created new works in printmaking, painting, drawing, and animation inspired by Hindemith’s most popular work.

Steve Rowell investigates ecology and post-natural landscapes in his multicomponent installation Uncanny Sensing, Remote Valleys (2013-20). The project’s title combines “remote sensing” (a method of data collection from the physical world via sensors and other remote technology) and “uncanny valley” (the cognitive dissonance caused by lifelike replicas of living things)

As a teaching museum, the JSMA is dedicated to helping students develop meaningful, life-long connections with art. In addition to regular museum visits and classes, we periodically receive grants that allow us to host scholars with a deeper research focus. In Fall 2019, Bokyoung Hong, a specialist in Korean ceramics, came to the JSMA for a 10-month Korea Foundation Global Challengers internship.

Every year, the JSMA partners with the University of Oregon’s Common Reading—campus-wide programming around a shared book and its themes—to organize a Common Seeing exhibition that explores and expands on the Common Reading through visual art. The 2020-21 novel is This is My America by UO Assistant Vice Provost for Advising, Kimberly Johnson.

The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (JSMA) and the Portland Art Museum (PAM) are co-organizing Nuestra imagen actual | Our Present Image: Mexico and the Graphic Arts 1929-1956. The exhibition aims to deepen and broaden the understanding and appreciation of the graphic art of post-revolutionary Mexico, a landmark in the history of twentieth-century printmaking and modern art.

In Winter 2019, Art History Professor Akiko Walley and Chief Curator Anne Rose Kitagawa team-taught an Utagawa School course in which students studied this vibrant artistic tradition and learned about exhibition planning in order to contribute to this installation, which features more than 30 loans from Lee and Mary Jean Michels along with prints from the museum’s permanent collection.