Kathleen Ash-Milby saw a blank canvas when the Portland Art Museum emptied its galleries for a $111 million renovation in 2023.

Ash-Milby, PAM's senior curator of Native American art and a member of the Navajo Nation, used the construction as a chance to scrap the old layout entirely. The Native American collection had been organized by geographic region: Northwest Coast, Great Basin, Plains and so on. That framework, as first reported by Portland Monthly, felt wrong for an art museum.

"We're not a natural history museum," Ash-Milby said. "I want to forefront the perspective of artists."

The reimagined galleries, spread across the second and third floors of the Main Building, now group works by theme rather than geography. Contemporary pieces hang alongside traditional ones. A kaleidoscopic work by Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson, created for the US Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, shares space with Columbia River Plateau flat bags, Choctaw basketry and Northwest Coast transformation masks.

The second-floor exhibition Shifting the Narrative: 21st Century Acquisitions showcases photography, sculpture, fashion and basketry, according to the museum's collection page. It highlights acquisitions from 2000 to 2025. The third-floor galleries bridge the Native American and Northwest Art collections with Rick Bartow: Storyteller, presenting over 40 works by the late Wiyot artist.

Ash-Milby brought on curatorial partners including Nez Perce and Cayuse artist and scholar Phil Cash Cash and multidisciplinary creator Brenda Mallory. Native American and Indigenous art now appears throughout the museum, creating cross-collection conversations with Asian, Northwest and modern and contemporary works.

One standout: a monumental Dzunuk'wa feast dish carved from cedar by Kwakwaka'wakw artist Charlie James. The piece had been in PAM's collection since 1948 but was never properly arranged until 2025, when Kwakwaka'wakw artist Marianne Nicolson visited and, as Ash-Milby put it, "set the museum straight." Nicolson showed staff the correct orientation. Visitors can now walk all the way around the carving.

The curatorial shift extends to a major traveling exhibition. The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art opened Sept. 5 and runs through Jan. 3, 2027. Portland is the only West Coast stop. The show draws exclusively from Melbourne's National Gallery of Victoria and features works by more than 130 artists, according to the museum's event listing. The exhibition spans ochre bark paintings, experimental weavings, neon, video and photography.

Featured artists include Anmatyerr painter Emily Kam Kngwarray and Senior Yolŋu artist Gulumbu Yunupiŋu, after whom the exhibition is titled, along with contemporary innovators Brook Andrew, Destiny Deacon and Betty Muffler. The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, in association with PAM, the Denver Art Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum.

PAM's Native American collection encompasses over 3,500 objects from approximately 200 Indigenous cultural groups across the Americas. The museum is at 1219 SW Park Ave.

What's on view:

  • Shifting the Narrative: 21st Century Acquisitions, Pat and Trudy Ritz Gallery, second floor
  • Rick Bartow: Storyteller, Piacentini Gallery, third floor, through May 23, 2027
  • The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art, through Jan. 3, 2027