New for the Wall: 2014 Curator Choices
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Kridel Grand Ballroom, Mark Building
New for the Wall Event adds seven works to the Collection
New for the Wall, the Museum’s evening to grow the collection, resulted in the acquisition of seven works of art. Following lively presentations by the seven curators at the Oct. 1 event, the guests voted. In the first round, Kehinde Wiley’s sculpture Likunt Daniel Ailin (The World Stage: Israel), the selection of Bruce Guenther, The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, was chosen for acquisition. The second round was close, but the Katsusaka Jōmon Deep Pot, presented by Maribeth Graybill, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Asian Art, was selected by a single-vote margin.
At the end of the event, several guests stepped forward with the funds to purchase the Abelardo Morell photograph Manhattan View Looking South in Large Room, the selection of Julia Dolan, The Minor White Curator of Photography. Thanks to their generosity, this stunning photograph will become a part of the Museum’s permanent collection.
Thanks to the generosity of donors, four more works have been secured for the Museum collections: the Native American works Tribute Panel and Tribute Chest by David Boxley and his sons; and the two European paintings, The Village Party and The Game of Bowls by Pieter Angillis.
MAJOR SPONSORS: Bonhams; Christie’s; Janet and Richard Geary; Ronna and Eric Hoffman Fund of OCF; Laura S. Meier; Vasek and Travers Hill Polak; Arlene Schnitzer; Nani S. Warren / The Swigert Warren Foundation; Bill and Helen Jo Whitsell; Dr. and Mrs. Alton E. Wiebe; REX HILL.
SPONSORS: Selby and Douglas Key; Sharon and Keith Barnes; Mia Hervin Moore; Andrée H. Stevens; Jim and Susan Winkler.
For more information about the event, tickets and sponsorship opportunities, please click here
or contact Julia Meskel by email or at 503-276-4365.
2014 Curator Choices
Dawson Carr, Ph.D. 
The Janet and Richard Geary
Curator of European Art
Pieter Angillis
more Pieter Angillis (Flemish, 1685–1734)The Village Party, 1727 Oil on canvas 19 x 24 inches Signed and dated, lower right: “P Angelles 1727”  Pieter Angillis (Flemish, 1685–1734)The Game of Bowls, 1727 Oil on canvas 19 x 24 inches Signed and dated, lower right: “P Angelles 1727”Courtesy of Robert Simon Fine Art, New York |
These charming pendant paintings depict English villagers reveling in moments of sunshine outside country pubs, the traditional bastions of public leisure. While one painting focuses on men playing bowls and the other on couples dancing to the music of a hurdy-gurdy, the scenes are teaming with brilliantly observed incidental vignettes, including a dog wanting to play ball with the bowlers. The artist Pieter Angillis was born in Dunkirk and enjoyed his most productive years working in Covent Garden, London. He specialized in genre paintings, or portrayals of everyday life, that enjoyed great popularity with the English – including the writer and critic Horace Walpole – for their agreeable depiction of the nation at play. These two masterworks by Angillis would be the first pure genre paintings to enter the European collection and, even though they are nearly three hundred years old, they show settings and activities to which the people of Portland can still relate. |
Mary Weaver Chapin, Ph.D.
Curator of Graphic Arts
Henri Matisse
more Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954)Pasiphaé, Chant de Minos (Les Crétois) Text by Henri de Montherlant (French, 1895–1972.) Published by Martin Fabiani, Paris, 1944. Artist’s book with 147 linocuts by Matisse, including 50 printed in black (of which 18 are full-page), 84 initial letters and reaped head-pieces printed in red, front and back covers printed in blue and white. Bound by Alix in full blue morocco, endpapers and flyleaves in grey suede with matching chemise. Edition 168/200 on Arches paper from a total edition of 250. Cover: 13 ¼ x 10 1/8 in. Courtesy of Ursus Books, New York, New York  |
In this stunning livre d’artiste (artist’s book), Matisse recasts the ancient Greek story of Pasiphaë and the Minoan bull. Matisse was responsible for every detail of the volume, selecting the typeface and paper with care and creating initial letters and headpieces to ornament the pages. Eighteen sensuous full-page linocuts grace the book; the soft medium of linoleum perfectly captures Matisse’s arabesque line, allowing the artist to “draw” into linoleum and translate his touch to the printed page. Matisse approached his graphic work in the same manner as his paintings; in 1946 he wrote, “I draw no distinction between the construction of a book and the construction of a painting and always move from the simple to the complex, but I am always ready to reconceive in simplicity.” Pasiphaé has been called one of Matisse’s finest graphic achievements. |
Deana Dartt, Ph.D.
Curator of Native American Art
David Boxley, David Robert Boxley, and Zach Boxley
more David Boxley (American; Alaskan Tsimshian, born 1952),David Robert Boxley (American; Alaskan Tsimshian, born 1981), and Zach Boxley (American; Alaskan Tsimshian, born 1984) Tribute Panel, 2012 Red cedar with pigment 57.5 x 48 x 10 inches Courtesy of Quintana Gallery, Portland  David Boxley (American; Alaskan Tsimshian, born 1952)Tribute Chest, 2012 Red cedar with operculum shells and pigment 26 1/2 x 34 x 18 inches Courtesy of Quintana Gallery, Portland |
Tribute is a two-part work comprised of a bentwood chest and hanging panel depicting the legacy of artist David Boxley. Boxley, known as the preeminent Tsimshian carver of the Northwest Coast, is represented in this work by the central eagle. Boxley Sr. is flanked by his two sons depicted as wolves, symbolism that speaks directly to their respective clans. The work as a whole celebrates the family’s journey—across history, geography, and time—paying “tribute” to the shared honor, pride, and inherent expectations of the Boxley legacy. Historically created to hold the most important objects of the family, the spectacular, fully carved bentwood Tribute chest symbolically holds the family as the treasure, anchoring the next generation in their culture and history. |
Julia Dolan, Ph.D. 
The Minor White
Curator of Photography
Abelardo Morell
more Abelardo Morell (American, born Cuba 1948)Manhattan View Looking South in Large Room, 1996 Gelatin silver print 48 x 60 inches Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York |
Abelardo Morell’s large-scale, beautifully detailed camera obscura (dark room) photographs are simultaneously exterior and interior landscapes. By turning hotel rooms, living rooms, and even museum galleries into large cameras, these inside spaces are overlain by the upside-down world that envelops them. Morell has traveled widely to create these images, but those capturing Manhattan and the many buildings that held him rapt during his adolescence are particularly powerful. Manhattan View Looking South in Large Room, one of the best known works from the Camera Obscura series, captures the spaciousness of a stark room overlain by the beautifully chaotic, abstracted outside world of Manhattan, its inverted avenues and skyscrapers transcribed by light on the canvas of ceiling and walls. |
Maribeth Graybill, Ph.D. 
The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer
Curator of Asian Art
Katsusaka Jōmon Deep Pot
more Katsusaka Jōmon Culture, JapanDeep Pot, Middle Jōmon Period (3500–2500 BCE) 16 7/8 x 16 3/4 x 13 5/8 inches Earthenware Courtesy of Mika Gallery, Tokyo and New York |
Japan has one of the oldest ceramic traditions in the world, dating back more than ten millennia before the Common Era. Until the introduction of the kick wheel from China, in the 3rd century BCE, functional vessels were hand-built with coils of clay and often bearing the marks of rope-wrapped paddles; hence the name for this type of ceramic, Jōmon or “rope mark.” The spectacularly sculptural pot, made by people who lived in the mountain highlands of central Japan, spreads from a narrow cylindrical base to a wide oval mouth with flamboyant coils of decoration. |
Bruce Guenther
The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz
Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
Kehinde Wiley
more Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977)Likunt Daniel Ailin (The World Stage: Israel) 2013 Bronze Edition of 3 with 2 AP 45 x 23 x 19 inches Courtesy of Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles.Image courtesy of the artist and Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, California. |
African-American contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley created this powerful bronze sculpture as a part of his 2009 multi-year World Stage project, which was modeled on the seven-year 1984 Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange for art and peace. Wiley was fascinated by Israel as a nation of people escaping social, economic, and religious persecution elsewhere only to find themselves enmeshed in its own systems of discrimination. This classical-style bust is a monumental portrait of Likunt Daniel Ailin, an Ethiopian Jewish Israeli that Wiley met in Tel Aviv, whose story and situation as a person of color in modern Israel intersected Wiley’s ongoing investigation of the tensions of identity, situation, and history. Incorporating the model’s own shirt and afro pick, Wiley accentuates the political context of the work by adding text to the comb and with a double-edged reference out of his own roots in South Central Los Angeles through the Hebrew sentence on the socle plaque that asks “Can’t we all just get along?” The work simultaneously addresses racial tensions in Israel and the United States, as well as underlining the larger political issues in the Middle East today. |
Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson 
The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer
Curator of Northwest Art
Trimpin
more Trimpin (German, born 1951)Red Hot, 2013 Multi-media installation with prepared piano, steel armature, and artist’s original scores 120 x 72 x 72 inches Courtesy of the artist |
Musician, installation artist, and winner of a MacArthur “genius award”, Trimpin is the creator of experimental installations that span genres and defy categorization. His massive and complex guitar tower If VI Was IX, 1999, commissioned by the Experience Music Project in Seattle, is a marvelous example of his command of space and sound. It is constructed of 700 guitars, 30 of which play and tune themselves automatically.Red Hot is an electronically automated robotic structure constructed from a bright red, repurposed, grand piano that conjures up images of Rembrandt’s Slaughtered Ox, a cadmium red harp, or a giant heart. The tripod suspending it and delicate metal music stand lend the piece an element of drawing linking distinctive sculptural shapes – like the rods in an Alexander Calder mobile. In Red Hot, the metal lines become a perfect counterpoint to the massive floating piano. The piece is a continuation of Trimpin’s decades-long fascination with Musical Instrument Digital Interface. This form of control, new to Trimpin, is adapted from the same technology now being developed to automate driverless vehicles. The audience interacts with Red Hot by activating the sound-making mechanism – becoming conductors by standing at the podium and gesturing with a sweeping movement of the hands. Activation occurs only if the performer is standing on the indicated space. Red Hot is programmed with a disarming variety of the artist’s original musical compositions. Trimpin’s technologically rich, imaginative, playful, and engaging work has established him as both a musical genius and a renowned visual artist. |