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The Art Gym
The Art Gym's regionally recognized program serves the Portland metropolitan area and the surrounding Lake Oswego and West Linn communities, areas where Marylhurst has become a focal point for artistic expression and cultural risk-taking.
Exhibitions & Publications
Since 1980, The Art Gym, under supervision of director and curator Terri M. Hopkins, has shown the work of more than 300 artists, produced more than 60 exhibition catalogs, and sponsored numerous artist roundtables and public forums.
The Art Gym Exhibition Catalogs
In celebration of 30 years of exhibiting art from the Pacific Northwest, The Art Gym, with a grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council and support from Shoen Library, has launched a digital collection of exhibition catalogs from 1980 to 2010. Peruse the Collection
Past exhibitions have included:
- Career retrospectives honoring respected artists such as photographer Terry Toedtemeier, sculptor Lee Kelly, landscape architect Barbara Fealy, and painters Michele Russo and Sally Haley
- Mid-career surveys for Judy Hill, Lucinda Parker, Roger Shimomura, Laura Ross-Paul, Christopher Rauschenberg and many more
- Thematic exhibitions on wide-ranging topics including environmental cartoons, family life, social concerns and medical issues
- Large-scale outdoor exhibitions of both traditional sculpture and temporary installations
Many established artists had their first exhibition catalogs published by The Art Gym. Marylhurst regularly shows the work of emerging artists and recent transplants, and brings artists together for their mutual intellectual and economic benefit. More than any other nonprofit gallery in the area, The Art Gym nurtures the Oregon artist.
Minds Meeting
The Art Gym collaborates with artists, writers, guest curators and other Northwest arts organizations. Exhibitions have toured to such museums as the Washington State University Museum of Art in Pullman and the Schneider Museum at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, and to community galleries throughout the Northwest.
In 1997 the gallery collaborated with the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) to invite three prominent guest curators from Oregon, Washington and British Columbia to organize exhibitions showcasing the art of our region.
A Vision Takes Shape
In 1980, few institutions took the art of the Northwest seriously. The Portland Center for the Visual Arts focused on national and international work, while the Portland Art Museum mounted infrequent regional shows and published only rarely. The handful of commercial galleries and artists' spaces concentrated, as they do now, primarily on recent work by individual artists.
The Art Gym began as the vision of Kay Slusarenko (Chair of the Art Department from 1978-1998), who saw the potential of the unused college gymnasium. In collaboration with faculty members Terri Hopkins and Paul Sutinen, the decision was made to dedicate the space to exhibitions and publications featuring art of the Pacific Northwest.
Sutinen supervised the initial physical transformation of gym to gallery and the community donated $1,500 and 400 hours of volunteer labor to the cause. Under the direction of curator Hopkins, The Art Gym opened its first show of contemporary Northwest art and published its first catalog in September 1980.
Art & Interior Design Department Support
The Art Gym is a program of the Art & Interior Design Department of Marylhurst University. None of The Art Gyms programs would be possible without the Art & Interior Design Department, which employs the gallery director and provides clerical support.
The exhibition program is an integral part of Marylhursts art program, which serves approximately 150 art and interior design majors, 25 students preparing for graduate studies in art therapy, and many interdisciplinary majors with a focus in art. Faculty and students from other colleges and universities and area high schools visit The Art Gym frequently.
Support of Friends
In addition to wonderful support from the Oregon Arts Commission, the Regional Arts and Culture Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, individuals provide essential operating support through the Friends of The Art Gym membership program. The Art Gym Committee, a 15-member volunteer advisory board, plans special fundraising events annually to meet expenses such as exhibition preparation, publications and promotion, artist and writer honoraria, marketing, printing, gallery attendants, documentation, shipping and travel.
