Stop by the Artspace Gallery and see if you can figure out how the 15-foot-high column of folded blankets keeps from falling over. The piece is part of Marie Watt’s new show, “Blanket Stories.”
Over the history of the Oregon Biennial, the Portland Art Museum learned that it’s impossible to please everyone. When the museum announced that it would eschew the ever-divisive Biennial for the Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, the prospect of a show that would whittle down its participants to five artists and expand its geographical reach to include Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming in addition to Oregon hardly seemed like the solution. Yes, it would provide visitors with a richer experience, allowing them to dig more deeply into the work of a handful of artists. But it would also shift the focus from homegrown talent. (In fact, only one of the five finalists, Marie Watt, is an Oregonian; the rest hail from Washington.)
The highbrow Portland Art Museum has gone lowbrow in its Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, which replaced the museum’s Oregon Biennial this year. For what it is and how it does it, CNAA is a superb show, but it’s no substitute for the Biennial. Museum brass decided to swap the sprawling Biennial for the more tightly focused Awards, figuring it was better to showcase a dozen pieces by five artists than to show only one or two pieces by 20-plus artists. The Awards are deep where yesteryear’s Biennial was broad, weighted toward Washington artists where the Biennial favored Oregonians. Nevertheless, they brilliantly capture listless Gen-X Cascadians at the height of their lowbrow ennui.
The Portland Art Museum’s changeover from the Oregon Biennial to the Contemporary Northwest Art Awards to showcase home-grown talent is like a dinner party with the guest list being downsized to a more intimate dinner for five.