On "Ursa Major" by Rick Bartow: “Rick was one of our incredible Northwest artists, a Native American artist, who used his Native American heritage to make some really strong, meaningful, playful, sometimes political sculpture. This is a wonderfully carved, pegged-together raven on top of a bear, with some Native American masks on it and some wings. It’s just this wonderful piece that weds traditional Northwest carving to a kind of contemporary sculptural idiom. I love it.”
Aaron Scott / OPB
On "Fir Trees" by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: "This one saw as a little girl in Seattle Art Museum. I was with my godmother, who worked for the Western Museums Association. And she asked me which painting I liked best, and I said that one because it reminded me of Hood Canal in the Olympic Peninsula. I was shocked when came to the Portland Art Museum as a 17-year-old, because I was probably 6 when I saw it, and was like: 'there’s my painting.'"
Courtesy of the Portland Art Museum
On "Doorway" by Louis Bunce: “Louis was the reason why I came to the Museum Art School. As a teen I went to the galleries in Seattle every weekend. And I saw a show by Louis from about this period — this from the early 60s — I saw this show and just thought his paintings and drawings were fantastic — I loved them. And the gallerist said, ‘honey, don’t you know, he teaches at the Museum Art School in Portland. You could go study with him.’ So I looked it up and I came, because I loved his paintings so much.”
© 1971 Estate of Louis Bunce, Courtesy of the Portland Art Museum
On Sherrie Wolf's "Floral Arrangement after Bierstadt": "It’s a still life painting of flowers in front of a [Albert] Bierstadt painting of Yosemite Park. So she appropriates paintings and then paints her own still lives in front of them. And amusingly, she and I were first year students in art school together, so I’ve known Sherrie since she was 18 and I was 17."
© Sherrie Wolf, Courtesy of the Portland Art Museum
On "Seal + Penguin 4 Ever" by Malia Jensen: “I love Malia’s work. I love the way she’s a very conceptual artist. She’s very concerned with and sensitive to the ecosystem and feminism. Her work is loaded. This seal, who is made out of cast polyurethane, is made out of this new material, is sleek and glossy, and it is squashing a penguin that is made with a traditional material, cast bronze. It turns out that when the seals overpopulate, the young, male seals go looking for any girlfriend they can find, and they will rape penguins in an effort to breed. And when the big seals sit on the penguins; they squash them and kill them. It’s about an ecosystem getting out of balance. It’s also about feminism and women and women becoming victims. Because she’s used this new age material, this cast resin, she’s also addressing the issue of new environmental challenges.”
Aaron Scott / OPB
On "Bad Doggie" by Patti Warashina: “Patti Warashina does wonderfully playful, tough work. You’ll see this little doggie is lifting his leg. His owner, who’s proudly showing him off, has little bandages from bite marks on her arm. He’s her little boy dog who’s a lot of trouble.”
© Patti Warashina, Courtesy the Portland Art Museum
On "Oregon Night Corral" by Morris Graves: "Morris Graves was one of the Northwest artists who went to Asia. This doesn’t look very Asian; it looks more influenced by European Modernism. But it’s a sheep ranch in Idaho. Those weird pink outline forms are little sheep. It’s kind of like a cross between a zen rock garden and a sheep ranch."
© 1935 Morris Graves Foundation, 2001.45.2, Courtesy of the Portland Art Museum
On why she put Rick Bartow's "Ursa Major" at the entrance to the Center for Northwest Art: “The other day I was walking through the museum and because I’ve been here since the 1970, there’s a lot of artwork I’m familiar with and a lot of artwork that has been added in that time. And I started tearing up – I felt like I was 17 again. For me, this Rick Bartow piece was like a door to the Northwest collection and really talked about the fact that there were people in the Northwest before the western settlers came. It’s an interesting continuum, and it just reminds that somebody else will come and be the next curator, and that hopefully we will just continue to go on and on.”
Aaron Scott / OPB
When Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson started as a 17-year-old student at the Museum Art School at the Portland Art Museum in 1970, there wasn't much of a Northwest art collection.
Laing-Malcolmson graduated and pursued a career in arts administration. She eventually served as the director of academic affairs at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and then the president of the Oregon College of Arts and Craft, where she spearheaded a nearly $15 million expansion.
By the time Laing-Malcolmson returned to the Portland Art Museum in 2010, this time as the Curator of Northwest Art, a major gift from Arlene and Harold Schnitzer had transformed the two floors that used to house the Museum School into the Center for Northwest Art. And fittingly enough, artists Malcolmson had once gone to school with, or later admitted to schools, filled its collection.
This week, Laing-Malcolmson retired. But not after rehanging the Center for Northwest Art one last time. She talked with our producer, Aaron Scott, about seismic changes over the course of her career.