About Shine a Light: A Night at the Museum
Saturday, September 19, 2009, 6 p.m. – midnight
Admission: Free with Museum admission
Where: Inside and outside at the Portland Art Museum
1219 SW Park Avenue, Portland, Oregon
SHINE A LIGHT: A NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM
For one night only, on Saturday, September 19 from 6 p.m.–midnight, the Portland Art Museum hosts Shine a Light: A Night at the Museum. The event consists of six hours of performances, installations, tours, workshops, and games by 15 artists drawn from Portland State University’s Art and Social Practice Program, led by Harrell Fletcher and Jen Delos Reyes. The Northwest Film Center joins in by breaking out of the Whitsell Auditorium to present vintage and contemporary works in some surprise locations. The projects are centered on artist and audience participation and visitors are encouraged to experience the Museum’s spaces and collections in new ways.
Projects and events take place inside and outside of the Museum. Outdoors in the sculpture court, local bands will play throughout the day and visitors can watch an expert “dowser” uncover the colors and sounds of works of art, see a demonstration of printmaking at a mobile print factory and sample specially made beer brewed to complement individual museum objects for the event by Lompoc, Laurelwood and Lucky Lab. Inside, projects located throughout the Museum include “Learn to Count in Mon”, a project to save endangered languages, a break-dancing display, musicians serenading select works of art, “Stranger Moments”, a roving theatrical tour of the Museum employees’ interactions in the galleries with strangers, video instillations from the Northwest Film Center and much more. The full Shine a Light schedule will be available at www.portlandartmuseum.org on August 27.
“Turning the sculpture courtyard into a concert stage, and the galleries into spaces for experiments in participation will help to shift people’s ideas about art and how they see themselves in the Museum”, said Christina Olsen, Director of Education and Public Programs at the Portland Art Museum.
About Art and Social Practices at Portland State University
The Masters in Contemporary Art and Practice with an emphasis in Art and Social Practice at Portland State University is a two year program that educates and activates students to develop and utilize their artistic skills to engage in society. Sometimes social practice might look more like sociology, anthropology, social work, journalism, or environmentalism than art, yet it retains the original intention of creating significance and appreciation between the audience and artist in a similar way to more conventional art. Students learn about a variety of working artists and non-artists who have engaged in civic activity, and will apply their knowledge and abilities to initiate, develop, and complete projects with the public – individuals, groups, and institutions. More information available at psusocialpractice.org/
About the Portland Art Museum
The seventh oldest museum in the United States and the oldest on the West Coast, the Portland Art Museum is internationally recognized for its permanent collection and ambitious special exhibitions drawn from the Museum’s holdings and the world’s finest public and private collections. The Museum’s collection of 42,000 objects, displayed in 112,000 square feet of galleries, reflects the history of art from ancient times to today. The collection is distinguished for its holdings of arts of the native peoples of North America, English silver, and the graphic arts. An active collecting institution dedicated to preserving great art for the enrichment of future generations, the Museum devotes 90 percent of its galleries to its permanent collection. The Museum’s campus of landmark buildings, a cornerstone of Portland’s cultural district, includes the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, the Gilkey Center for Graphic Arts, the Schnitzer Center for Northwest Art, the Northwest Film Center, and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Center for Native American Art. With a membership of more than 22,000 households and serving more than 350,000 visitors annually, the Museum is a premier venue for education in the visual arts. For information on exhibitions and programs, call 503.226.2811 or visit portlandartmuseum.org
Contact:
Jessica Lyness, 503-913-3882
jessica@nwfilm.org
Beth Heinrich, 503.276.4370
beth.heinrich@pam.org
