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Portland, OR — Arlene Schnitzer was quoted as saying “a city without an art community has no soul.” A new exhibition opening at the Oregon Historical Society on June 28, A Fountain of Creativity: 20th Century Northwest Artists and the Legacy of Arlene Schnitzer, honors Schnitzer’s influence on the history of Portland. The exhibition includes a range of bold, evocative, and influential works created by Pacific Northwest artists from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation — many of which will be on public display for the first time.
Featuring notable artists such as Louis Bunce, Carl Morris, Hilda Morris, Mike Russo, and Mel Katz, this original installation, which will be debuted in two parts, reflects the enduring legacy of Arlene Schnitzer and the Fountain Gallery and the ways that her work has helped feed the soul of Portland and of arts and culture across the state.
During the late twentieth century, the arts community in Oregon was small, isolated, and offered few opportunities for artists to exhibit and sell their work. While the Portland community valued public engagement with arts and culture, establishing an art museum, symphony, and a public library, local artists were isolated from the wider national art community due to a lack of commercial gallery space to show and sell their work.
Decades later in 1961, Arlene Schnitzer, along with her mother Helen Director and friend Edna Brigham, started the Fountain Gallery. The commercial art gallery, named after its location near the Skidmore Fountain, became a hub for Pacific Northwest modern artists and helped raise the status of the Portland art scene.
“I’m happy that the Oregon Historical Society wanted to share my mother’s legacy with old friends and many new citizens,” said collector, philanthropist, and son of Arlene Schnitzer, Jordan D. Schnitzer. “Focusing on my late mother Arlene Schnitzer’s Fountain Gallery — the first contemporary art gallery in Portland — these artists’ voices, embodied in their art, inspire us, challenge us, and tell the story of contemporary art in our community.”
Jordan Schnitzer purchased his first work of art when he was 14 years old from the Fountain Gallery. It was through Arlene Schnitzer and the Fountain Gallery that his initial acquisition turned into a lifelong pursuit to collect, share, and promote the visual arts. Jordan Schnitzer is now recognized as one of the Top 200 Collectors globally (ArtNews). His collection, consisting of more than 22,000 works, functions as a living archive to preserve art for future generations and share it with the public through groundbreaking exhibitions, publications, and programs.
The first part of this two-part exhibition will debut on June 28, 2024, and will run through January 2, 2025. It will feature artworks from 1915 into the early 1960s and will provide cultural and historical context on the Pacific Northwest arts scene prior to the opening of the Fountain Gallery in 1961. The second part, on view from October 25, 2024, through May 4, 2025, will highlight many of the artists who worked closely with Arlene Schnitzer throughout the Fountain Gallery’s 25 years supporting the local arts scene.
“Art gives you a different perspective on history,” says OHS Curator of Exhibitions Megan Lallier-Barron, “People’s lived experiences at a point in time are captured and preserved in art and allow us a means for reflection and interpretation in the present.”
The Oregon Historical Society’s museum is open daily in downtown Portland, from 10am to 5pm Monday through Saturday and 12pm to 5pm on Sunday. Admission is free every day for youth 17 and under, OHS members, and residents of Multnomah County. Learn more and plan your visit at ohs.org/visit.
About the Oregon Historical Society
For 125 years, the Oregon Historical Society has served as the state’s collective memory, preserving a vast collection of objects, photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, films, and oral histories. Our research library, museum, digital platforms, educational programming, and historical journal make Oregon’s history open and accessible to all.We exist because history is powerful, and because a history as deep and rich as Oregon’s cannot be contained within a single story or point of view.
About the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation
Founded in 1997, the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation collection, one of the most notable in North America, functions as a living archive to preserve art for future generations and share it with the public through groundbreaking exhibitions, publications, and programs. Today, the Foundation has organized over 160 exhibitions and has loaned thousands of works to over 120 museums, dramatically improving access to art, especially in underserved communities.