Lawrence Halprin, Fountains, June 23 – September 26, 2021
High res images available here
OJMCHE Summer Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 11am to 4pm
Public Programming: Lawrence Halprin: Touchstones and Innovation, May 25, Noon, Kenneth Helphand, guest curator. This talk is co-sponsored by the Architectural Heritage Center and the Halprin Landscape Conservancy. Recording of event.
Weekly Walking Tours of the South Portland neighborhood that features the Halprin designed fountains and was once the thriving home to the majority of the city’s Jewish community. Tours beginning in July are in partnership with the Architectural Heritage Center, for dates and times, check back at www.ojmche.org/calendar.
Media contact: Rebecca Biggs, Communications Manager, bbiggs@ojmche.org, OJMCHE 724 NW Davis Street, Portland 97209
Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education Re-Opens
with Lawrence Halprin, Fountains, a Celebration of the Innovative Portland Work of the Renown Landscape Architect
The exhibition Lawrence Halprin, Fountains explores Portland’s first urban renewal project in South Portland, which displaced an immigrant neighborhood of Eastern European Jews, Italians, and Roma. This story is one of both heartbreaking displacement and architectural success. The exhibit examines the evolution of the Portland Open Space Sequence, a series of fountains, plazas, and promenades designed by Lawrence Halprin and Associates between 1965 and 1970. Punctuated by Lovejoy Plaza and Forecourt (Ira’s) fountains these became sites for political upheaval, free speech, and ultimately civic inspiration that would inspire a generation of Portland leaders and landscape architects across the country to create new kinds of urban space. The exhibit explores the inspiration behind the designs, Halprin’s design process, and his fascination with water. Lawrence Halprin, Fountains is curated by Kenneth Helphand, Philip H. Knight Professor of Landscape Architecture emeritus, University of Oregon.
“Lawrence Halprin, Fountains, our first new museum exhibition in well over a year, is the perfect way to welcome our community back to the museum, said Judy Margles, OJMCHE Director. “Our focus on walking tours over the summer is an additional opportunity to experience and learn together. Halprin’s work was both historically a turning point for a Portland-centric urban design while also being a celebration of the city. We had originally planned to mount Lawrence Halprin in 2020 and I couldn’t be more pleased to re-open with this exhibition curated by OJMCHE’s longtime friend Kenneth Helphand.
“Even in the city, the sound and sight of water stirs the most elemental and basic roots of our human nature.” Lawrence Halprin
Lawrence Halprin is one of the great landscape architects of the twentieth century. In a career spanning 60 years he created trailblazing projects now recognized as iconic including: The FDR Memorial, Sea Ranch, Ghirardelli Square, Nicollet Mall, Freeway Park, Jerusalem’s Haas Promenade, Levi Strauss Plaza, Stern Grove as well as designs for campuses, shopping centers, communities and more. His signature design methodology was called the RSVP Cycles, Resources, Scores, Valuation, and Performance, and was designed along with a series of workshops in collaboration with his wife, choreographer, and dancer Anna Halprin, and the process is considered landmark in creative design practice.
“The Portland Open Space Sequence is an acknowledged masterpiece of modern design,” said Kenneth Helphand, guest curator. “Halprin is one of the great landscape architects of the twentieth century. His work helped revitalize the profession in the United States and was a model of design that was creative, innovative and addressed the urban condition. The Portland fountains are known worldwide. It would not overstate the case to say that they have been a pilgrimage site for design professionals, for they changed the concept of the urban fountain and were the catalyst for a revivification of fountain and urban open space design.”
Randy Gregg, executive director of Portland Park Foundation credits Halprin’s design with setting the stage for the city’s subsequent development of a superb system of contemporary parks and plazas. Spearheaded by the Halprin Landscape Conservancy founded in 2001, the sequence was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013, one of the first inclusions of a modern design.
“Renewal of the Park means a renewal of the civic life of Portland’s citizens, whose city is, in my view, one of the great cities in America because of its intense focus on the quality of life of its citizens,” Lawrence Halprin commenting on the future of the Ira Keller Fountain, 1991.
Companion Exhibition
The Architectural Heritage Center, AHC, is presenting a companion exhibition, South Portland and the Long Shadow of Urban Renewal, which examines the rise, fall, redevelopment, and future of South Portland. This exhibit looks at the logic and motivations of city leaders, beginning in the 1950s, whose redevelopment efforts focused on the future at the expense of the city’s past and present. These ambitions and impacted residents, businesses, and property owners in one of the city’s most diverse neighborhoods. But it also steered a stagnant, conservative city toward a modernist and meticulously planned aesthetic.
About Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education
The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE) explores the legacy of the Jewish experience in Oregon, teaches the universal lessons of the Holocaust, and provides opportunities for intercultural conversation. Through exhibitions and public programming OJMCHE focuses on Jewish art, history, and culture, while simultaneously recognizing the challenge of remaining relevant in a changing and tumultuous world. OJMCHE challenges our visitors to resist indifference and discrimination and to envision a just and inclusive world.