Current Exhibitions
Nancy Floyd: For the Love of Trees
December 7, 2024 – June 21, 2025
Study Gallery and Print Study Center
"Nancy Floyd: For the Love of Trees" features recent work by this award-winning Bend, Oregon photographer and author. In 2022, Floyd was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to embark on a multi-year project exploring the unique bond that Oregonians have with the forest and trees. The exhibition will feature a range of work from the past two years.Upcoming Exhibitions
Brenda Mallory: The North Star Changes
January 25 – March 22, 2025
Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery
Venture into a landscape full of sculptures and large scale installations by this Portland, Oregon mixed media artist (Cherokee Nation, born 1955). “The North Star Changes,” is based on the idea that humans perceive the North Star as permanent when, in fact, different stars have assumed the position and name over thousands of years. Permanence becomes impermanence as Mallory utilizes reclaimed and recycled objects throughout her work.Permanent Exhibitions
Northwest Perspectives: Selections from the Permanent Collection
On permanent view
Carl Hall Gallery
Visitors can explore new ideas of landscape, narrative, identity, form and process through a variety of paintings, sculptures and mixed media that highlight both visual and conceptual relationships between historic and contemporary art.
The gallery provides the museum with an opportunity to share many previously unviewed works that capture the rich and varied expressions that have taken place during the past century, which has been marked by rapid changes in the art world, the Northwest and its landscape.
Ancestral Dialogues: Conversations in Native American Art
On permanent view
The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Gallery
Featuring works from the museum’s permanent collection of American Indian art, this exhibition is organized around the concept of dialogue. The focus is on native art history as a dynamic, rich legacy from which contemporary arts grow today. Art works are placed in conversation, juxtaposed so that the work of many generations is in visual dialogue across time, telling stories of creation, transformation, and renewal. Historic baskets, bags, regalia, and lithics are displayed side by side with contemporary art works by artists such as Rick Bartow, James Lavadour, Bud Lane, Lillian Pitt, Pat Courtney Gold, and Joe Feddersen among many others.
Across Continents, Through Time
On permanent view
Mark and Janeth Sponenburgh Gallery
This exhibition features selections from the museum’s European, Asian, and American Collections, which span 4,500 years and encompass four continents: Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. On view are paintings, ceramics, prints, sculptures, textiles, architectural fragments, archaeological artifacts, Orthodox icons and decorative arts that will deepen visitors’ appreciation for artworks of aesthetic quality and expressive significance from cultural traditions worldwide.
Many of the works of art displayed in this gallery were generously donated to Willamette University in 1990 by Mark and Janeth Sponenburgh, and formed the basis for the creation of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art.
Print Study Center
On permanent view
Print Study Center
The museum’s collections of works on paper – prints, drawings, paintings on paper, and photographs – are stored, studied and displayed in the Print Study Center. The collection includes many contemporary American works, particularly by artists of the Pacific Northwest. Other highlights include etchings by the 17th-century Dutch artist Anthonie Waterloo, and 19th-century American expatriate artist James Abbott McNeil Whistler, as well as an early pictorial photograph by Edward Steichen. Temporary exhibitions in the Print Study Center are designed to highlight works in the permanent collection, and complement and enhance the special exhibitions on view.