Museums on The Real Oregon
The best museums in Oregon are an odd lot. Our hands-down favorite is the Benson Museum at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County: small, simple and magical.
Other favorites include the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University in Salem. A small art museum at a small private school, the Hallie Ford (named after the first wife of a Roseburg timber baron, Kenneth W. Ford) is a leader in collecting and showing Northwest painting of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The Portland Art Museum did a good job of mounting popular blockbuster shows under its now-former director, John Buchanan. It remains to be seen what the future holds there.
The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon has an extensive collection of Asian art and a large collection of work, though only a few top rate pieces, by Northwest mystic painter Morris Graves.
OMSI — the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland — is fun for children.
Read on for details on these and other museums in Oregon.
Sunday, May 20th, 2007
Better known as OMSI. the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, on the waterfront in downtown Portland, is the kind of science museum that’s all too common these days: Lots of high-tech-looking education, not much mystery.
That said, it’s not a bad way to spend the afternoon with children who are not too young or old to enjoy it. And everyone, too young or old or not, can enjoy the movies at the IMAX theater that is part of the complex.
OMSI also has the U.S. Navy’s last non-nuclear fast-attack submarine, the U.S.S. Blueback, which also appeared in the movie The Hunt for Red October. The sub comes with OMSI admission, but you can also pony up $15 each for a special two-hour small group tour.
Posted in Best things to do, Museums, Portland | No Comments »
Sunday, May 20th, 2007
This may be the best museum in Oregon. The Benson Memorial Museum, which occupies a one-room building at headquarters of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge 30 miles south of Burns, may have official hours posted somewhere, but we’ve never found it closed. It doesn’t charge admission. It doesn’t have a staff. It doesn’t have computers and video interpretations. In fact few people know its actual name.
What it does have is scores of old-fashioned stuffed bird specimens, mounted in cabinets and laid out in drawers, often with identification tags in decades-old handwriting. History and biology are intertwined here in a way that has been lost in too many other natural history museums. Seen a bird on the refuge you don’t recognize? You can find it here. A great museum, actually, because it’s musty and unpretentious and fascinating.
Please turn out the light and close the door when you leave.
Posted in Best places to go, Best things to do, Eastern Oregon, Museums | No Comments »
