Portland Art Museum

The Portland Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Pacific Northwest, founded in 1892 and now among the oldest in the United States. Set along the tree-lined South Park Blocks in downtown Portland, it occupies a pair of dignified brick buildings and holds a collection of more than 50,000 works spanning continents and centuries, from antiquity to the present day.

Its holdings are broad and deep. Strengths include Native American and Northwest Coast art, English silver, Asian painting and ceramics, European old masters and a substantial collection of modern and contemporary work. A dedicated Center for Contemporary Art and a noted graphic-arts collection give the museum unusual range, while its Whitsell Auditorium and film centre programme an ambitious year-round slate of independent, foreign and classic cinema.

The setting adds to the appeal. The main building, designed by the influential regional architect Pietro Belluschi, connects to a former Masonic temple that now houses modern galleries, linked by an underground passage beneath the street. The surrounding park blocks, dotted with sculpture and shaded by mature elms, make the approach one of the more pleasant in the city and place the museum steps from Portland State University and the wider cultural district.

Practical notes: allow two to three hours for a general visit, longer during major touring exhibitions. The museum is fully accessible and centrally located, easy to reach on foot or by the city's free-ranging light rail and streetcar. A significant expansion has been under way to link its buildings with a new glass connector, so some galleries may shift during construction. The café and shop make convenient breaks, and rainy Portland days keep the galleries pleasantly busy.