The Spirit of Vanport, 2021, by artist Alex Chiu. (Photo by Maddy Miller.)
The state-of-the-art Vanport building on PSU’s campus officially opens on December 7, 2021, and within it a public treasure awaits exploration. The new and magnificent permanent art collection of the seven-story building showcases work by 26 diverse artists. In addition, the entrance hosts The Spirit of Vanport, a large mural and exhibition, made possible by the Vanport Mosaic, a public memory activism organization.
“I'm so excited for the public to get to interact with these works,” says Meagan Atiyeh, who was the Oregon Arts Commission’s project manager. “Depending on how you move through the building, they will weave a different story.”
“We want to make the collection as accessible as possible, so we have created an online resource for people to enjoy whether on site or remotely,” says Sarah Kenney, manager of PSU’s art collection. Photos and information about each of the artists and their artwork may be toured via PSU's website: https://www.pdx.edu/museum-of-art/vanport-building-art-collection.
Each of the building’s occupants, PSU, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland Community College, and the City of Portland, participated in selecting the artists’ works. The committee set out to discover, purchase and/or commission art from a diverse community of local artists. Of the 26 pieces selected, 23 are by BIPOC artists, enfolding equity and inclusion into the collaborative public service building.
“Through education, public health and civic leadership, these are outward facing organizations with a common mission of service to the community,” says Atiyeh.
The Vanport building opens as PSU celebrates its 75th anniversary, and the name is all the more significant because PSU was founded as the Vanport Extension Center shortly after World War II. The decision to name the newest shared building on its urban campus Vanport not only honors the origin of the university and its first students, but also the way forward for mindfully changing Portland.
“It was important to us that the artworks represent our community,” says Kenney.
“The first thing we did as a group was to shape a mission statement that stated our goals for the artworks and for the makers we would support through purchase or commission. This began with diversity but also included descriptors such as work that ‘unfolds over time.’ Local curator Ella Ray wrote an essay about the collection that you can find online, that explores this topic more,” says Atiyeh.
“The Vanport Mosaic mural and exhibition at the main entry to the building aim to educate visitors about the importance of Vanport,” says Kenney. The project was curated by story midwife Laura Lo Forti with Chisao Hata and Shalanda Sims. The mural by Alex Chiu and exhibition by Bryan Potter Design work together to tell the story of Vanport, a planned city that grew up between Portland and Vancouver during World War II, where thousands of black residents once lived prior to a deadly and devastating flood.
Venturing beyond the entrance and into the lobby, one finds artist Jeffrey Gibson’s beaded work, which proclaims: "WE ARE ALIVE, WE ARE LIVING."
“This is an important sentiment especially as it relates to indigenous communities, which are living, thriving and contemporary communities,” says Atiyeh. “I see a lot of this pride expressed by the subjects in Susie Lee's video work, which includes members of indigenous and queer communities and others threatened most by the pandemic.”
Outside on the Harrison Street side of the building, poet Dao Strom's words in Vietnamese and English celebrate and insist on the act of breathing. On the second floor, Sharita Towne’s installation speaks to the cultural history of Oregon, mapping and illustrating Black Portland. Adjacent is Guadalupe Maravilla's Tripa chuca series, completed with the help of two local activists who work to elevate undocumented persons.
The committee commissioned Heather Watkins, a visual artist of experimental forms to create Soundings, for a waiting room on the second floor.
“For the Vanport commission, I knew that the works would be placed in the waiting room of the College of Education's counseling offices,” says Watkins. She describes her work of hand-stitched abstracted forms on off-white linen as representative of physical and psychological rooms where “time feels different, has a different weight.”
The new Vanport building’s art budget came from Oregon’s Percent for Art in Public Places Program, which is managed by the Oregon Arts Commission. One percent of funds for public buildings in the state go toward public-facing art, placing high quality accessible art in public places.
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