Aaron Scott, producer and reporter for the weekly arts radio show State of Wonder at Oregon Public Broadcasting, recently traveled to Pendleton, OR to visit the latest exhibition at the Pendleton Center for the Arts, Chuck Close: Selections from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation.
It’s not every day that a small-town art center gets to select works from a blue-chip artist like it’s checking out library books, but that’s basically how this show came to be. Executive Director Roberta Lavadour saw information on a number of touring exhibitions drawn from the collection of the Portland arts patron Jordan Schnitzer. On a whim, she emailed him to see if she might borrow a couple of works, too.
“And the phone rang within three minutes, and it was Jordan on the line saying, ‘I love this. Let’s do it,’” she said.
Lavadour traveled to Schnitzer’s Portland office to go through binders documenting his 11,000 prints. Then his family foundation covered the costs to ship and install the art and to bus in every sixth-grader in Pendleton to see the show.
The art center has partnered with area schools to teach students how Close overcame physical obstacles that eventually formed his signature style through field trips and hands-on art projects.
Chuck Close: Selections from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation is on view to the public through April 29th.