On November 20, 2025, the Portland Art Museum will officially reopen its transformed, expanded campus with a four-day celebration. The reopening marks the public debut of the new Mark Rothko Pavilion, nearly 100,000 square feet of new and renovated space, and a reimagined visitor experience built around access, connection, and community. The museum is celebrating by offering free admission and events from November 20 through November 23.
This is more than a ribbon-cutting. It’s the start of a new era for art in Portland.
A museum built to be open
For years, the Portland Art Museum (PAM) actually functioned as two buildings: the original 1932 Belluschi Building and the Mark Building next door. Visitors often didn’t realize how much they were missing, because the only way to move between them was through a tunnel-like connection that many people never even found. That physical separation meant the museum’s collections (historic to contemporary, local to global) felt fragmented to many visitors.
The new Mark Rothko Pavilion fixes that.
The pavilion is a striking new glass structure that links both buildings across multiple levels, creating one continuous, fully accessible campus. You’ll be able to move easily between galleries that were previously isolated or hard to reach, including areas that house major contemporary work and the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art. In an interview for OPB, Museum Director Brian Ferriso described the pavilion as bringing “connectivity, literally and figuratively… connecting people to art.”
The Rothko Pavilion isn’t just a hallway. It’s an invitation. With floor-to-ceiling glass, it acts as a kind of transparent “front door” to the museum, glowing at night and allowing people walking downtown to see into the activity of the museum instead of facing a closed façade. The design intentionally opens up to the street and to the South Park Blocks, so the museum feels less like a sealed institution and more like part of the city’s daily life.
Four days of free admission and celebration
The reopening festivities run from Thursday, November 20, 2025, through Sunday, November 23, 2025 and admission is free for the entire four-day event!
Here’s what’s planned:
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Thursday, November 20:
The celebration kicks off at noon with an official ribbon ceremony to open the Rothko Pavilion. Expect remarks from museum and civic leaders, a custom ribbon created by Portland Garment Factory, and live entertainment. The museum will then remain open to the public for free until 5 p.m., followed by an evening celebration from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. with food, music, and art experiences. -
Friday–Sunday (Nov 21–23):
Free admission continues, with the museum open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visitors can explore the transformed campus, take part in activities, listen to talks, and see newly installed galleries.
A once-in-a-generation expansion
The Portland Art Museum’s “Connection Campaign” is delivering one of the most significant cultural investments in Oregon’s history. The transformation adds nearly 100,000 square feet of new or improved gallery and public space, improves accessibility throughout the campus, and introduces new gathering places including terraces, plazas, and commons areas where visitors can meet, rest, and spend time.
There’s also a new café and an expanded store with access from the street, so even passersby who aren’t planning a full museum visit can step in, browse, and interact. The pavilion includes an outdoor public plaza, sheltered walkways, and spaces that are meant to blur the line between “inside the museum” and “in the city.”
Importantly, this expansion is designed around inclusion. The museum has emphasized that, after the reopening, all visitors, regardless of mobility, will be able to navigate more of the collection without running into physical barriers or dead ends. That alone is transformational for a museum whose architecture, up to now, was a patchwork of eras.
This whole project has been years in the making and represents well over $100 million in investment, funded almost entirely by private donors. The museum recently announced it completed a $116 million capital and endowment campaign to support the expansion and to secure the museum’s future.
The Mark Rothko connection
The new pavilion is named in honor of Mark Rothko who grew up in Portland after immigrating to the U.S. as a child. Rothko attended Lincoln High School here and took his first art classes at the museum’s school before eventually moving to New York and developing the style that made him internationally known.
To mark the reopening, the museum is debuting The Art of Mark Rothko, an exhibition opening November 20, 2025. Visitors will be able to trace Rothko’s evolution through multiple periods of his career, from early figurative work to the color-driven abstraction he’s celebrated for. The show includes loans from Rothko’s family and will run well beyond opening weekend (through February 28, 2027) giving people a long window to see it.
It’s hard to overstate how special that is. Portland is not just honoring Rothko by putting his name on a building; it’s actively showcasing his work in depth, in a space that now literally forms the public entrance to the museum.
Why this reopening matters for Portland
The museum’s leadership has been explicit that this project is about more than new walls. It’s about creating a “cultural commons”, a place that draws people back into the heart of the city to learn, gather, and feel proud of where they live.
The Rothko Pavilion’s design, with its glass exterior and public passageway, is intentional. You don’t have to buy a ticket to feel connected to the museum anymore; you can literally see inside. The building becomes a glowing landmark at night, a signal that downtown isn’t just offices and noise, it’s a place where art is happening right now.
