How do you fall in love with art museums?

Long ago my parents dragged me, a reluctant kid, along to museums, and astonishingly, I saw something I couldn’t stop looking at. It was the miniature Thorne Rooms in the Chicago Art Institute’s basement. The tiny rooms are replications of historic living spaces, back to the Puritans. To me, they were a universe of perfect dollhouses. Read More

Several years ago when Jordan Schnitzer was checking out real estate in Tucson, he visited the University of Arizona Museum of Art. He met up with Olivia Miller, interim director and curator of exhibitions, and guess what they talked about?

His artwork—and how they could put together a show. Read More

Portland photographer Austin Granger, who grew up in northern California and studied philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, prefers to load film into his Fuji GF670 or Deardorff 5 by 7 instead of pushing a card into a digital camera. Sticking to the old rituals, he’d also rather shoot in black and white than in color. Read More

Since Julia Dolan began her job as Portland Art Museum’s first full-time photography curator three years ago, she has amped up the museum’s activity in the art form. So far, she has curated about a dozen shows, many with single-word names like “Surface” (landscape photography), “Emerging” (new acquisitions) and the upcoming ”Fierce” (animal life). Her exhibits take full advantage of the exquisitely lit 2,200-square-foot photo gallery in the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art building, opened only eight years ago. Read More

Gary Houston has been hand-pulling silkscreen collectibles since he began Voodoo Catbox in 1995 in Portland. It was born from his 8-year-old graphic design and screen-printing business, so he was poised to find a place in the rock ‘n’ roll poster world. He doesn’t use a computer. He does everything by hand – from lettering to drawing to silk-screening. Many of his posters go for $30, but some bring in $450. He’s sold one piece for $600. The Chinese invented screen-printing 2000 years ago, he says, and nothing much about the craft has changed. He calls the work hands-on, physical, creative and romantic. “It’s leaving a little bit of history.” Read More

In 2000, as Jeff Condit took photos of Antoni Gaudi's elaborate unfinished Sagrada Familia cathedral facade in Barcelona, Spain, his vision of what his work could become opened wider than a large-aperature lens. Read More

At Auberge Saint-Antoine in Quebec City, backlit boxes display one-time buried objects that tell the stories of this city nearing its 400th birthday. Read More