Art Log, March 17, 2024: Fancy clubs, vinyl records, new museums and absurd ones.

Portland-based artists Sean McGonigal and Joanne Radmilovich Kollman made the New York Times recently. As former occupants in the Troy Laundry Building, they once had working space in what has now become a Portland branch of the exclusive Soho House. According to the article, Soho House positions itself as a creative space and features work by local artists to be enjoyed by those who can front the $1,950 annual membership. 

According to The Art Newspaper reporting on a recent survey, there are more museums and related organizations across the country than the number of Starbucks and McDonald’s locations combined. Pittsburgh-based Jon Rubin has taken the reigns on this topic with a project in that city’s central district each month inviting artists to rename the space, inviting a mirroring of absurdity. One such edition is featured in our cover photo.

Seattle is getting a new art museum thanks in part to a donation by real estate developer Richard “Dick” Hedreen. In addition to seed money, Hedreen will drop his entire art collection which includes work by Titian, Willem de Kooning, and Roy Lichtenstein to launch the Seattle University Museum of Art. The museum will rise on the Capitol Hill campus. 

Vinyl records have become so popular that the U.K. will again use them in the official basket of goods it uses to track inflation. The medium has been growing for more than a dozen years and according to Billboard Magazine, 49.61 million vinyl records were sold in 2023, up 14.2% from the previous year. And they are not cheap. A new copy of Blondie Live was more than $35 at Music Millennium in Portland this week. While the standards may be part of the equation, younger generations appear to be instigating much of the surge wanting physical copies to enhance music they also stream. One recent list has the top five albums on vinyl all by Taylor Swift.

Someone should document the Portland style of arts and crafts architecture if it hasn’t been done already. The Victorian-era houses here would likely for the most part feel in place in other U.S. cities, but there seems to be a specific wood-heavy Portland twist to houses built in the early 20th century. They feature exaggerated overhangs, complex cut-outs, and often several layers of detail. Below are a few examples.