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Collins Gallery

Collins Gallery Collins Gallery

The Collins Gallery on Central Library's third floor hosts regular educational and artistic exhibits. The gallery is open the same hours as Central Library, and admission is free.

If you or your organization are interested in exhibiting in the Collins Gallery please review the exhibits policy and complete an application.

Location & hours

Featured exhibitions

In Context: Work From Advanced Sculpture Students at Portland State University

June 29–August 10

Everything has a context. Circumstance, time frame, and the location of a particular space or site inform how a work of art is viewed, as well as its meaning. The issue of context is particularly important as it relates to dialogue within contemporary art.

The mixed-media sculptures in this exhibition were created by a selection of advanced sculpture students at Portland State University. The students featured were all members of a class that specifically explored the topic of context as it relates to contemporary sculpture. As a starting point for this exhibition, students were invited to respond to the unique physical and contextual features of the Collins Gallery, as well as the nature of the greater space it is within — a library. The work presented in this exhibition is the culmination of this project.

Curated by Erik Geschke, assistant professor of art, Portland State University.

 

Lewis & Clark and the Indian Country: Two Hundred Years of American History

August 14–September 25

This exhibit offers audiences a fresh perspective on the journey of the Corps of Discovery and its encounters with Native American between 1804 and 1806. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the Missouri River and it tributaries to establish a water route to the Pacific Ocean "for the purposes of commerce." The region through which the Corps of Discovery traveled is often described as a wilderness. In fact, Lewis and Clark traveled through lands settled long before 1804. Dozens of tribal groups occupied the country between St. Louis and the Pacific and exercised control over the area's resources and trade routes. The contacts between the Corps of Discovery and the tribes in the Indian Country were encounters between different world views and different diplomatic, cultural and economic agendas. Understanding that Native people were active partners in these encounters — not passive and nïve victims of American ambitions — opens a new perspective on events that unfolded in the West after Lewis and Clark returned home.

Lewis & Clark and the Indian Country: Two Hundred Years of American History was organized by the Newberry Library, Chicago, in partnership with the American Library Association. The traveling exhibition is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: great ideas brought to life. Other major funding has come from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Sara Lee Foundation is the lead corporate sponsor; Ruth C. Ruggles and the National Park Service provided additional support.

The traveling exhibition is based on a major exhibition of the same name mounted by the Newberry Library to mark the 200th anniversary of Lewis and Clark's expedition.

Opening Reception

Wednesday, August 19, 6–7:30 p.m.

Robert J. Miller, professor of law at Lewis & Clark Law School and Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals for the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, will present a program on the variety of relationships native peoples and the Lewis and Clark party forged and the impact of the American presence on Indian Country. Mr. Miller's book, Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and Manifest Destiny features a section on Lewis and Clark in the Northwest and the claims they were making for the United States to sovereignty and ownership of the Oregon Territory. Mr. Miller is an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.

Please join us for the lecture, exhibition and light refreshments.