Museum of Contemporary Craft

It’s not up to the standards of the old Corbett location. I’d been several times to the new location when it first opened, I even volunteered, but I haven’t been back in years due to the chronic disappointment. The original Contemporary Crafts Gallery has disappeared and we’re now left with this McMuseum version.

Loved this museum and especially the alien she exhibit about the riot grrl movement! I went there because of this exhibit, and I really enjoyed it. There was also an exhibit on bitch media which was great. The museum was smaller than I thought, but it had an intimate feel. It had a good energy and I felt relaxed and peaceful walking through. The staff were all very friendly. Check it out soon before the exhibits leave!

It’s a small space, more an artists’ workspace than a full museum. However, I still had a good time viewing the eclectic offerings of the local artists.

Our Museum of Contemporary Craft in the Pearl is eccentric. It has all kinds of alternative art, often with feminist themes. Admission is four dollars for most, and three dollars for some. Captions thoroughly go with each of the items here. This museum is small, so it may not be worth more than one visit.
Going here was long on my list. I found the top floor with its handcrafted purses, pop culture references and so on interesting. I listen to more mainstream music, so I did not understand much of this. There was an alternative room which showed a band that proudly called themselves fags and made some kind of social justice video with some odd robotic voice. It was entertaining. I did only spend half an hour on my first visit.
Try going here on a supposed free day.

I really, really want to believe in this museum and its mission. Its ancestral organization, the Contemporary Crafts Gallery up on Corbett Street, was wonderful. But the exhibitions here have been wee installations that take a mere few minutes to tour. OR — there is construction going on, seemingly more often than not. But hope springs eternal, and I’ve told out-​of-​town visitors about it — with the caveat, though, that it’s closed every Sunday. It’s the museum shop’s policies that have really disappointed me. There are no returns (even if you change your mind five minutes after your purchase), only store credit. Choose carefully. If you’re lucky they might even offer you gift wrapping. This, also, is spotty: depends on who is working there that day.

Decent, tiny museum that was free since they were renovating. Bag check in front. Take a right (if there’s no construction to walk around). Or go up an elevator to the left.
I’m not really a museum person, but I usually find their gift shops more appealing. This one was actually pretty good — lots of stuff from local artists. Swing by if you’re in the area!

Tiny museum (usually just one or two exhibits at a time) but always interesting stuff. One of those little jewels of a museum that you can finish in about 30 minutes.

Definitely enjoyed this spot! They we’re celebrating the area’s sustainable fashion movement and it was an excellent exhibit/​show. If you’re curious and have an hour to spare, definitely check it out. Plus the gift shop had some very cool wares!

Cute little museum. We came during exhibits about Cascadian fashion and British ceramics. The place is small but unique. My only real critique is the narrowly focused curation of the items on display. My husband and I are from the East Coast so the commentary on the subject matter struck us as being very biased toward the «Portland mindset.» It is totally understandable and actually made out visit amusing in more than one sense. The gift shop is definitely the highlight of the place and we purchased a beautiful glass bowl.

Small but well curated space. Having just come from the Portland Museum of Art, I expected a larger establishment but size isn’t EVERYTHING…
Current exhibition was beautifully displayed with excellent signage to give you more background information on the artists and individual works.
Love that they have a docent in the gallery to help answer questions and provide additional information to help you understand the work better. Really made a difference in how I connected with the work.
Gift shop was about ¹⁄₃ of the space, meaning there were a lot of items made by artists. While the goods were ALL wonderful, it was way to rich for my blood and I can’t really afford $ 200 earrings nor a $ 1,600 necklace… maybe one day…

I love having a smaller alternative to the big museum. My other bonus is my kids go free. We went recent and they had an exhibit upstairs for Soundforge. There was a sectioned off area with large plates and different sized mallets that the kids were able to experiment with sound.
There are so many underlying benefits to this museum that can easily be missed. They have an amazing schedule of lectures and talks. Drop in and Make programs for kids.
My big love, is I am a member. They have these amazing member preview parties about 4 times a year. They are free to attend, and the parties themselves are worth the membership.
This is a museum that definitely keeps Portland Weird, but I love to uniqueness enough to keep me coming back. As a parent too, my kids far prefer this museum over PAM.

4.5 stars… are you kidding me? After shelling out $ 14 for 4 of us, I was at least expecting it would take more than 5 minutes to get around. I have never seen such a pretentious collection of «art» in my life. There were at least 3 video ‘exhibits’ that either could have been made as a bet among drunk friends or the ‘artist’ was delusional. One even featured a clip I saw on ‘AFV’ a few weeks ago. Then there was an exhibit of broken bike locks, as if bike theft is a form of craft. The remainder was iffy ceramics. And there you have it…

I really enjoy visiting this place! I was also pleasantly surprised, as I happened to stop by on the first Thursday of this March, to find that in recognition of the first Thursday showings at local galleries the museum offers complimentary entrance on this day.
The staff was courteous, and polite, the selection of art was inspiring (albeit a bit limited), and the gift shop was actually surprising as well! Everything that I looked at was made by a local artist, and the prices were reasonable. You had everything from high end, and high priced, gifts to satisfy the most fickle of art aficionados, to local letterpress cards, gifts, and supplies, that make excellent reasonably priced keepsakes.
I was so blown away that I took advantage of being a business owner myself, and being able to set my own hours as a result, and filled out an application to volunteer here on a regular basis! I can’t get enough of this museum! (How often does someone say that?)

Stuffy, Snobby, Sterile, Pretentious. Not worth the admission even on free day.

We loaned several of our original pieces of Nikki McClure art to the Portland Museum of Contemporary Craft. We signed a contract with the museum that the loan on our art would be until November 15, 2011.
We attended the grand opening of the exhibit which was titled Nikki McClure, Cutting Through the Years. We were unhappy to see the direct sun (I know, a rarity in Portland) shining on a large three piece set of Nikki’s art which belongs to us. We wrote to the curator and we were assured that the shades would be closed so as not to cause fading on the art work.
Today is November 22, 2011. We have not received our art work back yet, even though the contract which was provided by the MCC stated the ending date was 11÷15÷11.
We received NO communication from the museum, no one phoned us to see if a later date would work for us, they just seemed to assume that when they got around to returning our pieces it would be fine with us.
After both my husband and I wrote to the museum curator only then did we receive a rather lame reply stating how busy they were and how they would «get around to it» after Thanksgiving.
Be aware folks, the Museum of Contemporary Craft is run by some pretty unprofessional people.

Awesome place to fulfill the artsy side of you, so many things to look at it!
We strolled through on a First Thursday so admission was free!
They were doing the main exhibit on a paper artist. Holy crap… she has got patience… she carves all these pictures with exact-​o knives, all are black and whites… very cool contrast and 3D like! I was amazed how she had all the curves so perfect and precise, it made us think twice about the process of her work… Amazing!
Upstairs they featured bikes!!! Heck ya… love bikes!!! There were some cool retro, trendy ones, and straight up unique ones! Strolling thru they also had other arts, such as jewelry, pottery, and some metal sculptures.
It would be cool if they had some hands on art you can do, but not at this time I guess. I would love to shop here for my home… but I must win the lotto first!

A local friend suggested this as one of the places to check out in our time in Portland. Went in May 2010, the exhibit at the time was just okay I would have preferred the one before or after (they were setting up when we arrived). I liked the idea of Gestures of Resistance but my youth had done a similar idea a few years ago and I thought they had executed it better. TIP-​Look online to see what the current exhibitions are. And it’s sad to say I actually preferred some of the work in the gift shop such as the woodworks more. It’s a small space so you can likely finish within the hour and we were the only ones in there at the time except the group of ladies who were part of a beading group and their work was pretty impressive. It’s a space I would support but the exhibitions at the time could have been better.

Very cool space and definitely worth the token $ 3 admission fee. There are two exhibition spaces, one on the ground floor and one upstairs. Currently, the Museum is showing Transference, a very cool kinetic-​sound installation which reinterprets the glass armonica by Portland-​based artists Andy Paiko (glass) and Ethan Rose (sound/​composition). The upstairs space had works by mainly NW artists, including a couple of videos (loved the 12 minute video of a gold coated tongue where you can see drool form). Don’t forget to stop by the gift store. It isn’t cheap but there are a lot of very unique items, many by local artists.

As usual Amy introduces me to these places and I’m always delighted to see some cool stuff.
The ‘nightie’ made of skin peelings is… interesting. I really love the optical illusion piece that is essentially a can of Campbell soup once you view it through a glass ball. There were some excellent ceramic pieces as well.
They don’t charge entry… just membership and donations (at least on Sunday). The shop is interesting although I found a few pieces a bit creepy.

This is a very small museum and it’s by donation only. When you first walk in, they will check your bags and give you a ticket for you to claim them later.
I wanted to check out the museum because they were doing a round table with local Portland crafters. The focus was to keep Portland «weird.» Since I’m a weird artist and into DIY, I was all over this. However, they didn’t know what we were talking about when we first got there but checked for us.
It was kind of funny that the first exhibit we viewed was something I had seen in LA. I’m pretty sure I had seen part if not all of this exhibit at MOCA about 8 months earlier. It’s still very interesting though.
There are two floors. The upstairs had more exhibits including some ceramics which we looked at first before watching the video. I wanted to look at the pieces again after gaining appreciation for the pottery after watching how the bowls were made.
Restrooms are upstairs and there’s a small gift shop on the first floor. They had the round table upstairs where I got to meet quite a few of the local crafters.
What made me really like this museum was the security guard upstairs was really friendly and interacted with the patrons. She told us where the round table would be and explained misconceptions over some of the exhibits.
I’d recommend trying to find a space for more than 90 minutes by the museum because there are a few galleries to check out nearby.