6 Places to See Free Art Made By BIPOC Artists

From your neighborhood library to the beautifully remodeled Portland International Airport, the littlest Portlanders and their grown-ups can bask in engaging art exhibits from a range of artists.

In the constant churn of taking care of kids, it’s easy to forget that there is art out there in the world to appreciate. Yeah, you appreciate your kids’ marker, glitter glue and paint masterpieces. But going out to see art in the wild reminds us just how talented and consummately unique humans can be. And the best part? It’s like a magical soup for the soul that everyone in the family can find appetizing. 

Pro tip: All exhibits are free and open to the public, excluding the terminal side of Yoonhee Choi’s glass installation, which requires going through airport security. 

Morning Song at The Lobby at the Ellen Browning Building

Ranjani Shettar, based in Karnataka, India, has her first exhibition in Portland. Her monumental wall installation, Morning Song, is located in The Lobby at the Ellen Browning Building and is part of the “Breathing. Room” exhibit. The wood pegs in her work, which look sort of like golf tees balancing pearls on top, vary in angle and scale, and are arranged along the wall in a flowing swarm.

Curator Sima Familant says when the middle school nearby visited the exhibit, the students were fascinated. They noted the shadows the sculpture casts, and some felt like the sculpture was moving. “When I’m creating something in my studio, I’m constantly going around them … I am moving and because I’m going around the sculpture, the sculptures get that movement in them, and in turn they make the audience go around them,” Shettar says. 

Shettar remembers marveling at the luster of the lacquered toys she had as a child and wondering how it was made. She worked with local Indian toymakers to make the pegs according to her design. Each of the 3,000 pegs was individually shaped. 

Just Playin’ Around exhibit at Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU

April is the last month to see Latoya Lovely’s installation at Just Playin’ Around at Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University. 

Lovely is a painter and muralist, with a background in education. (You might remember PDX Parent profiled her in our 2022 April Arts Issue; Lovely and her son were also on our cover.) She now homeschools her 9-year-old son, whose art classes take place on site with her during her painting commissions — he participates in her process from the design phase to completion. “It’s not about what’s convenient for my work,” she says. “It’s a constant collaboration and revision — it’s hard — but he gets that he’s important and that’s the biggest thing.” 

As the Trump administration actively dismantles diversity, equity and inclusion policies at the federal level, Lovely’s flexing her power to celebrate her culture. “It’s freedom,” she says. “It’s a celebration of Black excellence, Black creativity, Black community, Black ingenuity — all of that. We’re constantly fighting for freedom, and why not celebrate that and honor that by freeing yourself once you enter into that space?” 

“The mood is set for you to be a playmate,” Lovely says. The entryway is a hopscotch game and there are clothes draped over trees meant to be worn for dress-up. “We’re asking people to be brave and look into your heart and remember what it was like to be a child — ooh, I’m gonna cry!” She says the curators asked how they could make adults feel safe to play, and she tears up wondering, “Why do we have to beg people to be free?”

Mural at Midland Library’s Gathering Circle
and Across Oceans at The Reser

Printmaking has a rich history in civil rights movements fusing art and message to reach broad audiences in a reproducible and accessible way. And Kanani Miyamoto was always drawn to printmaking as an art form, “as a means of storytelling and resistance,” she says. “The ability to create multiple impressions ensures that these ideas are not confined to galleries, but circulate among the people they represent.”

She encourages families exploring her artwork to “spark conversations about how we are connected, no matter where we come from.” 

At Midland Library, look for the blue elements in her work. During a hands-on event, neighbors came together to paint blue ink washes inspired by water, which were later transformed into the flowing blue elements on the walls.

In Beaverton, at The Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, her large-scale print installation Across Oceans (pictured above with the artist) holds motifs from Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) culture that children can search for on the east and south windows. (Beaverton ranks second in Oregon for largest AANHPI population.) “Ask what the motifs make them think of,” she says. “For example, in Hawaiian culture, the bird motifs symbolize freedom, travel, guidance and even a connection to your ancestors soaring through the heavens.” 

Pro tip: Miyamoto also has a vibrant painted mural bringing life to a long side of the United States Post Office Milwaukie Branch at 11222 SE Main Street. 

Between installation at Portland International Airport Permanent Exhibit

Yoonhee Choi moved from South Korea to Portland in 2005 with a background in city planning and architecture. At the time, her art medium was welding — until she learned she was pregnant. Then, needing a less toxic medium, she started using chart tape — a small tape used for charting lines in map making. “Over 20 years, it became like my musical instrument — I played with it, got to know it, and now I can improvise,” she says.

Choi says her design for the Portland International Airport installation was site-specific, choosing soft colors to help calm stressed travelers and laminated kilned glass to diffuse the natural light coming from the window walls. Between is a permanent art installation meant to be enjoyed as you enter the security checkpoints (it’s located near the security checkpoint queues) and as you exit within the concourse connector. 

Choi uses open parentheses and speech bubble motifs as armature holding abstract shapes floating within the space provided, a parallel to the many unique stories travelers experience within the airport terminals.

Choi worked with a glass fabricator in Germany, which took six months to complete the project, and a whole month to ship the panes via boat.

Pro tip: Think your kiddo might get a kick out of seeing how this huge undertaking came to be? Until June, a temporary exhibit showcasing Choi’s process (pictured above, right) is on display pre-security in the mezzanine gallery — no airline ticket required!

Special thanks to Art & About PDX for their recommendations.

If you’re looking for even more spots to see beautiful art for free with the family, check out these places!