The new Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University is accessible from either the South Park Blocks or Southwest Broadway. (Courtesy of Roberto Rodriguez of Tom Cook Photo/PSU Foundation)

When the new art museum at Portland State University opens Nov. 7, it will be the third Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, named for the Portland developer, in the Northwest. While his funding of three university art museums might arouse some skepticism, it's hard not to be intrigued and even a little inspired by the possibilities for Portland and the region.

The new museum is a 7,500-square-foot space at the heart of the university's downtown Portland campus in the newly renovated Fariborz Maseeh Hall, a former bunker of a building that has been reclad and opened up as an inviting hub.

The museum shares space with student services such as financial aid and the registrar's office, core academic departments, and the instructional studios of the School of Art and Design. While the art students may seem like the obvious target audience, Schnitzer has his sights set on establishing a museum for all students.

In 2015 the state approved $60 million in bonds for a $70 million renovation of Maseeh Hall, built in the 1960s. The university hadn’t planned to build a museum but was required to raise $10 million in matching funds. Wim Wiewel, president of Portland State University from 2008 to 2017, approached Schnitzer and Maseeh, a PSU graduate who founded the technology firm IntelliSense.

Wiewel said that in discussions with Schnitzer about what he might be interested in supporting at the university, “he was very clear that his interest was in creating museums in institutions of higher education.”

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Jordan Schnitzer walks through the new art museum bearing his name at Portland State University. (Courtesy of Roberto Rodriguez of Tom Cook Photo/PSU Foundation)

Maseeh committed $5 million to the building renovation. Schnitzer offered the university $5 million, but stipulated that $4 million go to creating a museum and $1 million to endowing a fund for a museum director. An anonymous donor contributed the final $1 million needed for the renovation project.

Linda Tesner, former gallery director at Lewis & Clark College, was named interim museum director in August. She planned the inaugural exhibition, the optimistically titled “Art for All,” a show of strong work from Schnitzer’s collection that includes nearly 50 paintings, sculptures and prints.

Tesner's programming for 2020 includes an exhibition by Portland artists Arvie Smith and Daniel Duford. The Ford Family Foundation in Roseburg has contacted Tesner about hosting the exhibition of its 2020 Hallie Ford Fellowship artists, and Tesner is talking with the Portland visual arts nonprofit Converge 45 about showing the work of New York artist and composer Jace Clayton.

Portland State’s annual Bachelor of Fine Arts exhibition, previously held across multiple gallery spaces, will be centralized in the museum. The Master of Fine Arts program is in transition from a two- to a three-year program and won’t have a thesis show in 2020, but future shows will be in the museum.

Tesner will also work with the university’s academic departments to facilitate collaborations and generate ideas for museum exhibitions and programming.

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Installation view of the first floor of the new Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. (Spencer Rutledge)

“The mission that Linda’s charged with is that she will not rest until she does whatever she can to make sure every student makes coming to this museum part of ordinary campus life,” said Schnitzer. “She won’t rest until she reaches out to every department on campus and works with those deans to say, ‘We’re here to serve you.’ ”

But Tesner has a one-year, part-time contract. The real work will fall to the permanent director. It’s a critical next step.

“A national search will be conducted to recruit and hire the permanent JSMA@PSU Director, who will in turn hire other museum staff and establish fundraising goals,” Susan Jeffords, the university’s provost and vice president for academic affairs, said by email.

The new director will join two other new hires in Schnitzer's collection of museums. Robin Held joined the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Washington State University as its executive director in August 2018, and John Weber started as executive director of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon in October. With the right hire in Portland, all three museums could be headed by accomplished, dynamic museum professionals at the top of their games.

Portland State University’s museum is unique in the mix in that it’s a non-collecting museum – the University of Oregon and Washington State have free-standing museums with permanent collections – and it’s on an urban campus. It’s like comparing an apple, an orange and a grapefruit, observed Held. Where the museums may come together most is in planning and programming exhibitions.

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In the new Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Alex Katz's "Departure 3 (Ada)" faces a painting by Robert Colescott from Jordan Schnitzer's art collection. (Dan Kvitka)

Schnitzer is evangelical about putting work from his collections on the road. Shows organized through his foundation often travel to other museums, with the foundation covering expenses such as framing and one-way shipping. A consortium of the Schnitzer museums would create economies of scale, especially in researching and preparing exhibitions. Tesner already has her eye on a Louise Bourgeois exhibition that Held and her museum's curator, Ryan Hardesty, organized using Schnitzer's collection.

“I look forward to all of us getting our heads together,” said Held.

Like Schnitzer, Held is committed to sharing shows to bring substantive exhibitions to Northwest communities. “If I can create an exhibit that travels to Everett and Vancouver and then to Portland and then to Eugene, we’d have a shared vocabulary where we don’t now around beauty and excellence and joy and expertise,” she said, noting that her role extends to bringing art to Washington State’s five campuses.

The Portland museum may also draw on expertise that Weber brings from his experience as the founding director of a vibrant and innovative non-collecting museum, the Institute of the Arts and Sciences at University of California Santa Cruz.

But the most important and interesting question Portland State University and its museum will need to answer is: Will students go inside?

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The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art's inaugural exhibition includes work such as Kara Walker's laser-cut steel "play set" (at front). (Dan Kvitka)

As visual enticement, Schnitzer commissioned a wall installation by glass artist Therman Statom for just outside the museum entrance. A small café fronts the museum, which will offer free admission.

Ultimately, Portland and the state’s only urban university now have a central art space with a lot of possibilities and an endowed curatorial position. If there’s strength in numbers, then its position as the newest Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art also bodes well.

“There’s nothing that’s as accessible as that museum. It’s a wonderful thing to have created that,” said Wiewel.

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University

When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday.

Opening events:

Thursday, Nov. 7: Grand opening, 10:30 a.m.; museum opens to public, 5 p.m. First Thursday reception.

Saturday, Nov. 9: Family Fun Day with all-ages arts activities, 10 a.m-5 p.m.

Where: Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University, 1855 S.W. Broadway.

Admission: Free.

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